Yeah, I wouldn't usually ask a question like this, but I'm starting to have thoughts that most linux distros aren't taking to my pc very well. Here are the specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4ghz
Abit AW9D MAX 975X/ICH7R
ATI Radeon x1900xt
2x 250GB Seagate Barracutda SATA 3.0Gb in RAID 0
Soundblaster Live! 24-bit

As for ethernet, which kinda matters, and some distros seem to not like my onboard NICs:
I have 2 Realtek RTL 8168/8111 Gigabit PCI-E NICs


What distro would surely support all of these very current devices? I've tried that new Sabayon Linux, but for some odd reason I get a "Signal Out of Range" even on the livecd bootup...so I actually haven't got to play with that one. Mandriva 2007 sets up fine, but it doesn't boot(comes up with some kinda Kernel not in sync trying to kill init!) thing. I also tried the Fedora Core 6 Prerelease, but my ethernet is not working in that distro

Any direction you guys could guide me in would be wonderful.


Thanks for reading over,

ch13f121

Start over with Knoppix, it's got a huge amount of supported devices (since it's a live-cd distribution). If it can work out with your hardware, you at least know the hardware works with Linux with some tweaking (if not right from the start). If all the hardware devices are supported, but the kernel modules (for example) are not loaded into the kernel or kernel lacks support for your hardware, you could just install any distribution that boots and then reconfigure the kernel to support your devices.

Linux itself is the kernel, the rest is programs (mainly GNU), so if some kernel works with your hardware (as it probably does), you can get every distribution work with your hardware by installing the apporopriate applications and/or modifying the kernel configuration -- which is not so difficult, after all.

Did you search HCL already? And Google? If your hardware is marked as 'compatible', you should be able to get it working with virtually any distribution.

Well, I just checked HCL-NONE of my stuff, save for my video card/sound card, is in that catalog. I ran ubuntu live-cd, 6.06 the other day (actually kubuntu) and it works perfect.

I originally designed this pc with windows in mind, as I use windows for my day to day activities...but I'm wanting to try some linux on the side, or even switch over for a while if that's possible- but I'm finding that difficult to do haha.

Also I'm a newb at the inner workings of linux...I kinda prefer not to mess with the kernel too much given my current level of experience with it- think of me as a 7 year old kid that's used windows for around 3 years- just getting the feel of it, and barely breaking the skin of what it can do.

I've had no problems with Gentoo

You don't, but I do- beleive me, I wish I could go straight into gentoo and have at it- but the last time I tried that distro....resulted in my failing to install it multiple times. One time I got to a desktop, but ALSA and all this other crap was't configured :-/

Sabayon linux is actually gentoo based, which made me wanna try it out- but like I said, I couldn't get a desktop.

perphaps free bsd i have 5.1 but theres 6.2 which ill be upgrading in a few months
specs u have it has kde wireless webcams and stuff spoorted

I dunno if I can do FreeBSD...I'm a newb at linux/unix. But I tried SUSE 10.1, and it didn't even want me to install onto my software Intel ICH7R raid 0- said it'd destroy any and all data on this raid if i chose to install. I took this as it would have collapsed my raid and caused all sorts of problems.

So, my main question is this- I need a distro that will support my ICH7R software RAID 0, along with a Realtek RTL8168/8111 onboard NIC, does anyone have any suggestions? Ubuntu works with my nic, but not with my raid- I have to run it with a liveCD. Mandriva doesn't boot after setup. SUSE doesn't want to be compatible with my RAID, and FC6 Pre didn't like running much at all

Thanks for the help,
ch13f121