Or perhaps the necessity of HCLs at all is indicative of a larger problem. This is not something end-users should be responsible for. Maybe 10+ years ago when the options were fewer and easier to sift through, but now? It's tedious to the point of maddening.
It is probably indicative of a larger problem, although one that is very hard for the community to solve. A big issue with hardware support is the lack of specifications and vendor participation. Vendors are getting better at that, but it's still an issue and the major vendors are less-than-stellar. For consumer components, Intel is about the only one that's all-in on Linux support; nVidia insists on binary drivers that are hard to install and have a checkered reliability history, and ATI provides specs but to my knowledge no engineering effort (although AMD/ATI may be improving on that front). Not sure how things are in the sound department w/ Creative, etc. these days.
If vendors provided and honestly advertised Linux support, that would be a much better world. Then compatibility can be checked at the store. It'd be bad, though, if they supported Linux like they do Windows - with a gig of userspace junkware.
