[plug] Linux support for Promise ATA100

[Sol]

Russell Hobman wrote:

>Goodaye pluggers, I am fairly new to Linux, and I was hoping that someone
>could advise me which Linux distros are similar. the reason being is that I
>have just bought a promise ata100 card and plan to install it in my Mandrake
>8.0 box. I have been to the promise Linux support page and cannot find a
>specific mandrake driver. however there is support for other Linux distros
>there. could someone advise which would be the closest match to use with
>mandrake 8.0. my choices are:
>1. Turbo Linux Server 6.5
>2. Open Linux 3.1
>3. SuSe 7.1/7.2
>4. Red Hat 6.2/7.0/7.1 
>many thanks for any assistance. regards, Russell.
>
>
>
Hi Russell,

I've had a little look at 1, 2 & 4 on your list and would suggest that 
SuSE is the closest to Mandrake, FWIW. Both Mandrake and SuSE (the 
latest editions) have excellent hardware detection and install very 
quickly and easily on modern hardware. Unless you're insistent on using 
esoteric hardware you shouldn't have to much to worry about with the 
latest editions of SuSE or Mandrake (and even then you might be 
surprised!) I have had trouble with Red Hat though, every time I've 
tried installing it on anything, but maybe it's just the limitations of 
my pea-size brain. :-) I believe that Mandrake 9.0 (which hasn't been 
released yet) will have an adaptation of the dpkg/apt-get packet manager 
which Debian pioneered. This is a killer way to install new software 
live off the net and could be a big plus for getting newbies involved. 
Mandrake has also released a gaming version for the hardcore gamer. FYI, 
Mandrake seems to be trying to focus on the desktop user, whilst SuSE 
and RedHat are focussing more on corporate users.
Whilst I'm a recent convert to Debian, I'm not totally one-eyed on the 
question of distros (yet! ;-) ) and have to say that it's horses for 
courses when making the decision. So why not try them all out?

Sol