hi, does anyone know of any desktop distro that has the same hardware detection quality as knoppix?? thanks alot i'm using a labtop btw, that's why the two distro, fedora core and debian doesn't work too well, and i'm new to linux:|

Try to install Knoppix on your harddisk! "knx-hdinstall" helps you to do this.

Good luck!

Why don't they work well? Give us an idea of what you are looking for so that we can recommend something.

for starters, when installing fedora core 3, it doesn't recognize my sound card completely, and don't quite get my vid card either (can't display widescreen res).. can't get my wireless card.. Debian doesn't get my vid card, can't start up graphical user interface (startx).. i haven't try any other things yet, debian is still installed :|

I run FC3 on my laptop and it works fine. I have a HP 1100 series. I had to change the X config to use a LCD generic and I set the display right. I have never messed with the cound, but I am sure that I could get it to work. The WIFI card is going to present issues with any distro. Your going to have to use NDISRAPER and you can find a tutorial on this site under the network section.

If you need anything else hollar.

another thing that's bad about fedora core 3 is that for some reason, about 70% of the time, it boot up half way and just freezes, everything stops, i waited for like 20 mins, and it is stlil frozen :| anyone know why?

What is the error message it gives when it stops? It sounds like something is also wrong with your Xconfig. Use your linux boot disk, get to a command line type

vi /etc/inittab

You'll see a list of run levelsl like this. Whats in red is what needs to be changed. Its should be 5 on your box and just change it to 3. What this will do is get you to a mulit user command promt. If your computer boots to here then you most likly have have wrong video driver installed/configured.


#
# inittab This file describes how the INIT process should set up
# the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author: Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
# Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
# 0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 1 - Single user mode
# 2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
# 3 - Full multiuser mode
# 4 - unused
# 5 - X11
# 6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:3 :initdefault:


You could also post a dmesg output , Also the output of /var/log/boot

Oops I just noticed that you installed debian and not fedora. I think that you should go back to fedora if you do not know much about nix*

FC3 has some bugs, but not as bad as some of the others. Also its alittle easyer to configure than debian.

Mepis is a Knoppix variant with even better hardware detection. Unlike Knoppix, Mepis is designed to be BOTH a good liveCD and a good hard drive installed OS. Mepis has an easy "Install Me" utility on the desktop and when you're done you have a fully maintainable Debian hard drive install.

KANOTIX!

With a proper install I have never had RH or FC have any trouble on a laptop. I have had RH9, FC1,FC2,FC3 all on my HP laptop. It used all intel chipsets so I think it should work on yours.