Most distros use a generic kernel that contains drivers neeeded for basic operation. These kernels are larger than ones specially made for your hardware. Some specialized drivers like graphics may not be included but will run in a more simplified graphics mode that works for all cards.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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Linux doesn't have a Device Manager or database like Windows does. It automatically picks the appropriate drivers for the hardware in the system when it boots, based on what drivers are installed. And as others have mentioned, most distros ship generic kernels with all the open-source drivers included.
Thats so nice.
Only thing that didnt work was the wifi card but that'll be an easy fix
Famous last words...
Haha totally im asking for it now!
Remember ndiswrapper?
Yes, unfortunately. Everything is better now. We don't even have to generate a new xorg.conf anymore and worry about getting the refresh rate wrong.
Goddamn…….. I forgot all about that……..
Yeah, it confused me at first, but now I love it and never want to have to go back to dealing with Device Manager freaking out if I need to move a drive or swap out hardware.
It usually works fine. If later you find something isn't working, you can just install what you need. I've done this several times and had it just work, even on machines with very different hardware.
When you boot the computer, each device identifies itself to the OS using a combination of a vendor code and a device code. In Terminal, try the following two commands:
lspci lsusb
did the same with a PopOS installation on vastly different devices, was prepared to wipe it all and do a clean install, but failed to get to bootloader in time. You can imagine my shock when it booted up perfectly fine without a single error!
Is there anything wrong
generally speaking, no. you shouldn't have a problem with most drives, it should at least boot. you might need to do something like install the right GPU driver though (and get rid of the old one) if they are a different brand or generation. obviously the driver for AMD isn't going to work if the laptop has NVIDIA, but you also might need a newer or older version depending on what's in the laptop. if the laptop has hybrid graphics, you might want to install something for that too.