Hardware Support?

[trininox]

I was looking to experiment with Linux or FreeBSD on my workstation before trying to do anything with it on my production server so I finally decided there would better support on the linux side of things since a few companies actually release drivers for linux.

I'm yet final on which distro to use, Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slackware, Turbolinux, Ark Linux, SuSe, Debian.... the list could go on but I've only interested in these and so your thought on that could help as well...

My question is basiclly will i have to jack with stuff to get my hardware to work, I'm a Newb as you've guessed and dont want to have to much headache when i start. i can create enough of those when i start playing around.

Asus P4C800 Deluxe (6.1 Onboard, SATA, 3Com Gigabit, HT)
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Creative SB Audigy 2 Platinum
P4 3.0cGhz w/HT
Lite-On 16x DVD
Lite-On 52x24x52x

So as far as i know, I'm sure I wont have a problem with getting HT working, since Linux does support it, Creative isnt helpful with drivers so thats a concern, DVD, CDRW shouldnt be a problem but i'll need to look for a program to replace my beloved Intervideo WinDVD and Nero :) ATI doesnt have drivers? or do they, i've heard alot of ATI have support. the 3Com Gigabit i know has drivers i can grab over at the Asus site.

Any help with which distru to get and If my stuff will work is gonna help me dive right in, thx.

[Choozo]

The only part in your list that may give you some worries are the SATA, but a Google 4 Linux (http://www.google.com/linux) search should give you lots of help?

Cheers, and welcome! :)


Oh, and I would go for Mandrake 9.2 - but I'm sure you will get some other opinions on that in no time :D

[JamminJoeyB]

I'd say the second thing on the list that will be a bit of a pain is the ATI card. There are a lot of treads on here about getting ati cards working with 3d acceleration.

As far as a distro goes. I'll refer you to the which distro thread on here. Read the reviews as distrowatch.com. They can also be lots of help.

[EnigmaOne]

From what I've done with RH9, I haven't seen much of an issue with ATI video hardware.

Given the fact that you can still D/L the ISOs and burn 'em for free, give it a first try.
Then you can try some other distros to see what installs with full hardware support, though I'm betting that RH9 goes without a hitch on the first shot.

You'll probably fiddle with partitioning more than you will hardware.

All in all, YMMV, so do your homework, and expect less than perfect results.

;)

[Ninja_Squirrel]

Right now I am running Suse 9.0 with SATA and its running fine. I had to do the hard drive tweak so it was a 32bit drive instead of a 16bit drive. But other wise it seems to running good. Suse is a go one for noobs. But I would go to there sites and check out there hardware compatibilty.