I'm going to make one other comment about the IDs and hardware in general. If
we started documenting the details people would go get hardware elsewhere.
It's not something we want to encourage. Documentation takes time,
development takes time, and we want to encourage people to buy hardware that
is explicitly supported rather than hardware which is not. A piece of
hardware that is available from multiple sources might not be supported in
every version.
When we purchase a few hundred of a particular card we have to verify (beyond
just ordering the same model) a random sample to ensure it remains unchanged.
A CSR USB bluetooth chipset for instance off ebay may not work even though it
explicitly indicates "Linux" is supported. Searching for a product based on
the model off h-node doesn't necessarily get you the same product.
I can't tell you how difficult it is to confirm product information half the
time. "Manufactures" frequently advertise information for older products or
different products. If I went on h-node and found out that P-DAL TL-XXXXXX is
a low profile graphics card compatible with Trisquel 5.5. That might be true
if I get that exact card. The model does not indicate the exact card though.
The chipsets can and do change and the components which come with them can
and do differ from one seller to the next. In one case in particular I can
think of we had the hardest of times finding a card with a particular
bracket. The chipset was always right, but nobody had the card with the right
bracket. The manufacturer said they came with it, the web site said they came
with it, the distributors said they came with it. Ultimately we found ONE
not-terribly reputable company that had it with the bracket we needed. Then
it took a while longer to find a distributor. The only thing that indicated
it came with the bracket was a sticker on the box. That isn't enough
information to actually locate the card though with the bracket as retailers
don't advertise it based on the box. They advertise it based on the
information they get form the manufacturer and they manufacturer provided the
same info for both the version that shipped with the bracket and the one that
did not. So ultimately you would have to sample a dozen cards or more maybe
before you found a source that had the version which actually came with the
bracket. By the way- there were only two companies which had a freedom
friendly chipset with this bracket and one was for a VERY high end card. We
ended up going to china for it... although now have two cards. One we get
from a distributor in the US and one more direct from China. The later one we
actually had to go a mold to get the bracket made.... ick. Small investment.
