Generally you don't need instructions if the card is linux friendly because the drivers should already be included with your kernel. For intance, I stick a linux friendly card in my RedHat machine and when I boot up it automatically detects and loads the module for it. Then you configure it the same as any other network card using your distro instructions.
That's not so in Windows, you must install a driver from the included disk and the instructions can vary between different network card vendors because there may be different driver options. In other words, it's generally a "no-brainer" in Linux. And if you want more information on kernel driver options you would find it in the kernel documentation. Now, if the hardware in question needs to include a Linux driver that is not included with the kernel then I would fully expect there to be documentation with it, and would be upset if there were not.
But I can understand not putting in specific instructions for every version of all 500 Linux distributions. But you are right. They could at *least* have a simple blurb stating something like "For more information on Linux configurations see our web site" where they could keep fairly up to date information on the latest distros.
[ November 20, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]