sort of newbie questions
 

Ok. When I've installed different distro's to see what I like, I'm fairly certain they have all said in the startup screen PCI bus = 33. I just want someone to confirm that this does not mean the ATA hard drive bus is 33Mbs instead of 100 or 133. Please confirm or tell me what this truely means.

Second. Since I've tried linux, I looked up the hardware in my systems, and most pieces don't specifically list linux support, but it must be cause it is working. I recently came into a few hundred bucks and was thinking of building a dedicated linux box. It you have any suggestions on which motherboard, video, sound,etc or a website that lists the better supported hardware, please post it.

Thank you all for your help.
In case it is important, I've been trying Redhat, Suse and mandrake. Most people say Slack is real good but has a harder learning curve, so I should get comfortable with one of the choices I've tried already.

thanks again
adam

The 33 is measured in mhz and doesn't have anything to do with your ATA specs. You can have a PCI bus @ 33mhz and still use ATA133 or whatever. Realize though, that the supposed 100mb/s bandwidth is just theoretical and it is unlikely that you will ever see speeds like that. With my fsb and the ram I am using matched @ 390mhz, they (manufacturers) give me a theoretical memory bandwidth of 3200mb/s, but I rarely see above 2800. You'll likely see 30-50mb/s or so for your hd.

As for your next question, it all depends on what your going to spend, and what you need from your computer. Almost all hardware can be made to work with some effort, but it is always nice for it to work easily ;)