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Debian Proprietary features

Simply put, there is no paid version of Debian with extra features.

One of the side effects of this is that there is no official Debian-unified administration utility. SuSE, for example, provides YaST, and Ubuntu provides UCc. However, there are many configuration and administration tools available in the distribution, and the various window managers, such as GNOME and KDE gather their administrative menu entries in one place for easy use. likewise, there are third-party applications that work well on Debian that bring most, if not all, common tasks into a single place with a unified and user-friendly interface.

Probably the most important issue the administrator will run into is the problem of supported hardware. While Debian attempts to support as wide a variety of hardware as possible, some manufacturers don't provide information on their proprietary hardware. Without such information (required to write a driver), if a manufacturer doesn't provide a Linux driver, it won't be supported in Debian.

There are special cases. Certain Windows XP drivers can be used by Linux if they are available, but they require additional steps to install and activate them.

Actually, this isn't so much a Debian issue as a Linux issue. Some distributions that offer a paid version may include proprietary drivers in the enhanced version. However, in general, if your hardware is supported by Linux, it will work with Debian. There are a number of pages available on the Debian Wiki as well as other sites explaining how to get Linux and Debian to run on many systems with unusual hardware. Furthermore, with the gain in popularity of Linux, many manufacturers are providing the necessary drivers, if not free and with a license that allows them to be included in the base distribution, at least in a format that can be installed and used with Debian.

Best practice: check hardware support lists and compatibility sites for Linux before purchasing hardware or installing any distribution.

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