Mandrake 9.2 worked like a dream with this controller, but for some reason, 10.0 could not be figured. I am about to install 10.1, and I hope that this will be updated, as I can not view my other ide's at the mome.

I have now tried a few distro's to see if this controller was installed during setup. All failed to install it.

Debian Sarge
Libranet
Mepis
Zen
Bonzia
Mandrake10.1

I have not attempted to compile a driver, but wanted to see if this hardware was supported 'Out of box'

First off, while this product can be compatible with linux, it's not completely so. Promise released drivers for the 2.4.x kernels. However, there are only binaries for a few outdated versions of Redhat and Suse. There is source code as well, but you need a working distro to compile the code so if you don't have the distro on another hard drive you have a Catch-22. Promise itself has terrible support and their instructions are poorly written.

So, what about the 2.6.x kernels? Promise promised drivers by the middle of 2004 and have yet to deliver. There are drivers in the linux kernel for the card, which do work. However you then have the limitations of software raid, where if you dual boot you are no longer going to have Windows be able to use it. I have no idea whether you can boot from the hard drives with this approach, though I doubt it, and when originally installing linux had to buy another hard drive that it could actually be installed on.

Short story, I recommend highly of staying away from Promise's products.