Canonical announces a component catalog for Linux

For all intensive purposes Ubuntu and Fedora are the same operating system. They use the same kernels, same compilers, same drivers. Any differences between them have far more to do with politics then technical differences.

That is your not going to find hardware that works in Ubuntu that is not going to work in Fedora and visa versa. Not unless you run into bugs and in that case they should be fixed by the distributors. If it works in one system and not the other it's probably a f-up on the part of the one that does not work.

Anyways. Logo branding and certification programs are very important. Unless your willing to sit down and spend a lot of time testing yourself, or have very high levels of technical knowledge about the specific hardware and drivers, then your dependent on this sort of thing. It helps make it easier for people to choose hardware, helps promote the OS, and helps promote the hardware manufacturer. It's a win all around.

That being said this needs to be improved quite a bit to be useful.

There needs to be a automated benchmark suite, not for posting performance numbers, but for posting compatibility information. It needs a chart with different sections on hardware and how they rate up and what exactly is certified. Most vendors offer a selection of different hardware configurations and this information is relevant.

A example would be something like this for wifi:

Dell Inspiron XXXX
-------------------

Wireless card: Dell Model Foo 2000

Driver Tested: 2.6.35 B43 Linux kernel driver

Supported Protocols: 802.11 A/B/G (Tested),
802.11 N (not tested)

Security Modes:
WEP (Tested 128bit)
WPA (Not Tested)
WPA2 (Tested)
PSK (Tested)
EAP-TLS (Tested)
EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2 (No)
PEAPv0/EAP-MSCHAPv2 (No)
PEAPv1/EAP-GTC (Tested)

That sort of thing. Testing should be automated as much as possible and it is up to the vendor to perform the testing, depending on the level of certification they want. Such They could run a benchmark test and provide results to Ubuntu for 'level 1' and that costs nothing. Registing the hardware gives the manufacturer a right to display a certain Ubuntu logo on the box art or website.

For top-level 'Enterprise certification', however they need to send sample devices to Canonical for testing and pay fees. Part of the services that can be provided by Canonical by the fees is that if the hardware fails they will help provide kernel/software support to get it to a passing grade and provide documentation that can be used by the vendor's customers in deployments. Once the certification is complete then Ubuntu will promote the hardware and recommend it to customers and lots of other fringe benefits. Maybe discounts for enterprise support for the hardware vendor's customers or something like that.

There is a lot of ways this can be used to help promote both the hardware and the software.