Forgive me if I seem a bit clueless but my experience of getting hardware to work in Linux is based on blind luck.

I'm running Fedora Core 2 quite happily at the moment, but I want ot ugrade my graphics card, motherboard and processor. I'm currently running an XP1800+ on an Abit KG7 mobo (Via chipset) and a GeForce MX440. I have the latest version of the Nvidia drivers.

The upgrade combination I'm after is an NForce 2 motherboard, XP2600+ and FX5700 based graphics. I know this is quite modest but it will fulfil my purposes without costing me an arm and a leg.

My question is: what do I need to do to ensure that Linux will work OK after I change my hardware over.

Cheers,

Ade135

backup data before you do it
research Nforce drivers with your distro, sometimes you need to tweak it to work.

Finlay,

Cheers.. I had a crack at it, and with all the new bits in place (Biostar M7NCD NForce 2 Motherboard, Athlon 2600XP, Asus V9570TD GeForce 5700 graphics). I turned off the onboard sound and network card in the BIOS, and booted Fedora. The Nvidia graphics driver (version 61.06) required no adjustment to work with the new card, and in fact, Kudzu (the Red Hat hardware tool) detected the removal of the VIA chipset and the installation of the Nvidia one and configured them automatically. I have had no problems in the first couple of days with the upgrade - out of box support for NForce 2, it seems.

In Fedora Core 2, one of the things I have noticed is that Kudzu seems to have come on in leaps and bounds, it used to be a royal PITA.

Success all round with Linux, then. Over on my other partition, Windoze went into convulsions at the first sign of new hardware and after several hours of frustration, I reinstalled it from scratch. Just as well I followed your first piece of advice :-)

I'm not a total n00b after all ;-)

Ade135