[plug] Linux hardware compatibility

[Mark Saxon]

Gavin Chester wrote:

>Please excuse the preamble - if you have little time cut to the end
>where I actually pose questions :^) :
>
>I'm a user and lover of older hardware (for me it's a  recycling thing -
>the PC I'm using everyday is a 2nd hand PII 450MHz with old SCSI drives
>and a 32Mb graphics card), so I was out of touch with current hardware. 
>However, I offered to help my 18 year old son (who lives 450km away)
>build his own system for his first ever PC, since he doesn't have the
>knowledge himself. So I have been doing research on the latest hardware
>trends to help him get some suitable gear.  Of course, he has a limited
>budget but can run to around $2000 - and he is satisfied with a
>"mid-level" system, by today's standards.  
>
>My research brought me up to speed to see some key shifts in technology
>for desktop systems showing that he should consider a system based on:
>
>- the 5 (five) series Intel chips with hyperthreading.  (I don't want to
>start an AMD vs Intel flame war here - and I consider that going to
>AMD's 64bit architecture is too early since there is little true 64 bit
>software yet.)
>- DDR2 RAM instead of DDR
>- at least one or two PCIexpress slots along with PCI.
>- PCIexpress x16 graphics instead of AGP x8
>
>Along with this help I'm offering with the hardware I have been slowly
>chipping away at his doubt and he is ready to consider running Linux on
>this new PC (YAY! - suck that Bill Gates), or at least he will dual-boot
>XP until he weans himself off Windoze.  So my questions are this:
>
>1/ Is this sort of hardware supported with any typical distro out of the
>box?  Eg. will he enjoy a good newbies distro like Mandrake and have it
>detect all his hardware?
>2/ People on this list have reported problems with Mandrake 10.1. 
>  
>

Hi Gavin,

I have a mix of newish hardware on my box and have recently installed MD 
10.1

Modem detection failed on install and no dial up network packages were 
installed.
Network setup failed again after boot .
Had to install manually via rpmdrake unless you know the package names 
your after
it would be quite tricky.

Same result on second box. Install bug maybe?

urpmi  Had quite a lot of trouble locating working compatible mirrors 
for  plf
contrib update and main rpms.  With out working urpmi sources he would
have a limited experience particularly on the multimedia side.
A windows user could find this pretty frustrating. 


Nvidia  video card if you went with it will need drivers down loaded 
from the  Nvidia site.
There were no pre complied modules  for my recent card but new module  
compile cleanly for my system.
Module did not load at boot however and modprobe has to be run.
XF86Config file needs editing by hand.
All this from the command line as root.

New Samsung DVD consistantly fails to load older  cd media.
Works fine under knoppix so I assume its a mandrake issue.


Just a sample had other issues.

These could be show stoppers for a windows only user on their own.

Mark


>Should I steer him to 10.0 or what is another good newbies distro?
>3/ Should he consider a bleeding-edge distro, like Fedora Core 3, in the
>hope of having better hardware support for newer gear?  The last thing I
>want is for him to be put off Linux by having to try and patch his
>kernel or any mucking about to get fundamental hardware working.  
>4/  I can't remember the URLs for checking Linux hardware compatibility.
>Can anyone point me to some useful sources of info? 
>5/ Anyone running their own system with such hardware and have you had
>Linux problems because of it?
>
>TIA
>
>Regards, Gavin 
>       
>
>  
>
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