Hi All!

I actually hate to ask this question, but here goes.
I have been using Fedora since core 3, I installed core 5, the day it was released, and have had nothing but problems with it! I believe my solution here is to go with a different distro, nothing is working with this one (fc5). So, this brings me to the question, I would like to find something that will handle my GeForce FX 5200 video card, my "Live 24 bit" Soundblaster, and my Kodak digital camera (none of these work in fc5, no matter what I've done). I would also like something that will handle some games, the usuall stuff that comes with Gnome & KDE, plus Quake 4. I preffer the Gnome desktop, that was the nice thing about fc3,4,&5, you could have a lot of KDE stuff on Gnome.

I have Ubuntu 5.10 on another computer, and like it real well (I may have answered my own question here!), but I wanted to ask the community here, and lean on your experience, as to what may be the distro that will fit the bill here. I am not intimidated by the command line, but I by no means consider myself proficient with it.

What ever I go with next, I will be installing it on a:

Compaq Presario SR1426NX
2.93Ghz Pentium 4
1.5GB PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM
160GB 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice on this

Justbill

If you like Ubuntu, why not try the real thing.

Why Debian ... A Sales Pitch

as for yout gfx card sound card and camera you should look them up in hcl and see what distro people have gotten them runnung on. Quake 4 shouldnt influence your choice of distro. It will actually influence your windows emulator. WINE runs most windows programs but if it doesnt work i would suggest trying VMWare. I think ubuntu should work just fine though as far as i can tell. Otherwise you might want to go to something like gentoo which gives you a more power and control. This should let you get the drivers installed correctly. However, it will also require more command line.

really...IMHO...it depends. all distros are basically the same...some have a few whizz bang features built in, but normally nothing you can't add yourself. Package management is the main thing to consider when choosing a distro. how much time do you have/want to spend updating, installing pkgs, etc. Installation of most distros has become pretty simple and somewhat fast(most distros!! ). The hardware is basically going to either be supported or not, regardless of which distro you use, either out of the box, or by installing some drivers. If you like ubuntu, stick with ubuntu, if you want to try some others, try some others.

I must say, yum in fc5 looked pretty good, as far as a package manager goes. Apt is real nice in Ubuntu! I guess I was just looking for opinions on hardware support. I do like to tinker with my system somewhat, and don't mind jumping in command line, however, as I believe I said before, I do consider myself a novice with the CLI, I can follow instructions though! I tried Debian once before (a while back) and had some problems, due to my own inexperience. I guess it made me a little "gun shy" of Debian. Quake 4 has a linux installer available from ID software, so I should not need an emulator.

Thanks for the link rickh! I will give Debian another look. One thing I forgot to mention is, this is the family computer. My wife (honey, where's the power switch), and my kids (uhhh...it says it needs updates), also use this machine. So I suppose I need to consider also what is going to be easy for them.

Thanks for all the thoughts on this, I know asking "what distro" is really a loaded question! I should of asked about hardware support more specifically.

Justbill

well any distro you install beyond a livecd will give your wife and kids one more step inorder to boot windows (selecting the OS from the boot loader). This step will not be affected by which distro you choose. This is more of a question of bootloader and i think either lilo or grub will work fine and be straight forward enough for anyone else using the computer. Both debian and ubuntu should offer to install one or the other when you go through the installation.

Sorry, tamoneya, that was kind of a joke about my wife and kids. They are actually very comfortable doing what they do ( email, web surf, some games, etc) in Fedora Core, using the Gnome desktop. I appologize if it was taken the wrong way. To be truthful, none of us care for win XP, and we very seldom ever boot it.

Justbill

lucky you. My parents and brother are actually clueless. If that is the case go linux all the way.

Thats what we do!
They are familiar with Gnome though, I suppose they would learn KDE if they had to. Thats kinda why I was asking the distro question the way I was asing it, hardware support, and Gnome.

Justbill