[plug] Hardware compatibility

[Russell Keith-Magee]

Quoth Lewis Carroll:
The time has come, the Walrus said, to speak of many things,
Like whether AMD is faster than Intel,
or a GeForce3 Ti200 is better value for money than a GeForce4 MX...

.. or something like that anyway.

The time has come - I'm replacing the old beast with a brand spanking new
beast (with bigger horns).

Here's the spec I'm looking at:
Asus A7V266E motherboard (no raid, no onboard sound)
Asus V8170 GeForce 4 MX440 graphics card
Soundblaster Live DE 5.1
Pioneer DVD-116 DVD-ROM
Sony CRX175A 40/24/10 CD-RW
Alfa 10/100 ethernet card (cheap and nasty job; realtek chipset AFAIK)

Can anyone share any experiences with Linux hardware conflicts/compatibility
with any (or all) of the above components?

In particular - the parts that are worrying me are:
- the CDRW (This is my first foray into the world of CD-RW, so I have no
idea as to the level of support for the hardware. I've been given an option
on a LiteOn burner, but I don't have a model number; any opinions on this
one?),
- the graphics card (I've got a TNT2 card at the moment, and the NVidia
binary drivers have always worked well for me, but I'm interested to know if
they are still good for the GF4's)
- the network card (cheapies always worry me)

I'm not an overclocker, nor am I a 31337 gamer; so the fact that a
motherboard can't be OC'd to mind numbing speeds, or I'm missing out of 2
fps of subpixel antialiased gib rendering doesn't really bother me.

Related Sub-question:
Can anybody recommend a good Linux Hardware compatibility site? I've tried a
few:

- Linux Hardware Database (http://lhd.datapower.com): seems badly organised
(dozens of entries for the same piece of hardware), and the presented
opinions are of dubious quality (e.g., a TNT2 video card that I know works
fine is rated 1.0 by somebody who has a beef about NVidia in general)

- RedHat's hardware database (http://hardware.redhat.com): while good in
some areas, is very incomplete - it doesn't seem to recognise that Asus make
graphics cards, for example. Preference seems to be given to hardware
manufacturers seeking "official" certification, and not many seem to be
seeking this certification.

- The Linux hardware compatibility HOWTO is woefully out of date and has far
too small coverage of brands to be particularly useful.

- The general sites like Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com),
AnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com), ArsTechnica
(http://www.arstechnica.com), etc: These guys run their tests under Windows,
and don't often give specific Linux advice.

What do you Pluggers out there use to determine hardware compatibility?
(other than pony up the cash, return if it doesn't work...)

Thanks to all,
Russ Magee

********************************************
Russell Keith-Magee
Software Engineer
Calytrix Technologies
Unit 9, EIR Building, Technology Park
PO Box 1173, BENTLEY 6982, Western Australia