deciding on distro suitable to me...need advice
 

so i've decided to dwelve fully into linux, and rid myself of windows where necessary (may need for various programs-photoshop, etc.)

and i need a bit of advice (or some information) of which one to choose. i'm thinking of basing my choice soley on my hardware preferences - as anything else i want (software-wise) can be installed or uninstalled by me at another point in time.

so, i have two things to ask:

1) where can i find the hardware dependencies or support of each distrobution (for instance, if i were to want redhat, but not sure if my preferences for hardware-lets say radeon for example-are supported by them, where do i find the list that says that they support it?)

2) or could you give me an idea of which distro(s) support the following preferences of mine:

ASUS motherboard
Athlon XP Processer
Radeon Graphics Card
Wester Digital hard drive
Seagate hard drive
sound blaster sound card
generic cd writer/player
generic dvd writer/player
genereic floppy drive (i'd guess that all would support this)


thank you for your time, and i look forward to your support in my efforts. i am finding linux to fill all my needs (short of photoshop 7-but i'm sure that'll get worked out eventually), and i wish to support the linux community however i can (at this point, probably not really able to-don't know much yet, someday tho, someday i'll be able to help people in my position :) )

Any major distro will suport this hw. Its really a matter of taste. Try suse/fedora/mandrake. My advice would be: do a very complete install, choose the installer to install as many packages as it can in one move. Even if you can't figure why is the package for, in a first sight.
Also, look for other threads like this. People tend to ask this question very often.

thank you for your response :)

IMHO, the very best distro according to many on LinuxQuestions.org including myself is Slackware version 10.0.
This should be great for your described hardware, and give you many options for what you wish to do. Why does this LQ member think so?

- According to http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...p?product=238, Slackware 10.0 is rated 9.6 out of a perfect 10 !!

- According to the Linux-Distributions Forum where you posted the above, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?s=&forumid=5, the Slackware Forum has over 83,000 postings, more than twice that of any other LQ forum !!!
(believe that this high volume is due to more people using this distro or inquiring about this to install/use, rather than due to major problems with this linux distro)

- One particular posting from the Slackware Forum by LQ member shilo, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?s=&forumid=5, has over 29 pages(!!!!) of replies.
This member created a special Slackware-distro install website (outside of LQ) http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack/ from this LQ-forum posting and his resulting replies.

- Have personally installed and used used Slackware on a barely-Pentium laptop (try a P100, 40MB RAM, 540MB hdd, no CD-ROM!?); several desktops with generic HW like yours, w/ your display card manufacturer as well as others; and mainstream laptop and desktop PC's
(Compaq/HP, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, AMD K62/Duron/Athlon/AthlonXP... clone systems...)

nycace36

To answer your questions: Generally hardware issues in linux are things of the past although i still sometimes encounter problems with exotic things (like old compaq scsi cards, which i found the fix for after some searching). And generic hardware support is very good. To say more, Linux nowadays will run on almost any hardware by any manufacturer (within reason of course, don't expect to see KDE on a 386 machine :)). So any distro you pic would work on your hardware. Oh the only mainstream exceptions afaik are some wireless cards, winmodems, and 3d acceleration on the newer video cards.

that's what you think, i think amount of questions signifies issues. if there are no issues then why ask questions :)

TY for response, Mikhail_16! Fair enough point. OTOH, going beyond my opinion, let's get some facts for comparative purposes and ultimately for terry.trent's and others queries.

Please feel free to check out the 'Choosing a Linux Distribution' wiki at http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...x_distribution and another VERY good, non-LQ distro review site, http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

The LQ head, jeremy, posted a thread 'News: You can now Review and Compare your favorite distro at LinuxQuestions.org', http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=65238, containing the LQ Distro Review I quoted above, from http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/index.php .

For more detailed information about the plethora of Linux distros available, LQ has a fairly comprehensive List of Linux Distributions at http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...distributions.
BTW, this member (nycace36) helped to edit the Slackware and the Amigo Linux wikis.

Moderator trickykid posted a 'News: How to pick a distribution for youself ?' message, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=20451, which has over 65 replies to date. Note that a sizeable number of those responding to the post prefer Slackware, SuSE, and Knoppix.

IMHO, one good way to get a much more detailed feel for a distro's potential issues is really to review the postings at the LQ Distro forums themselves.
According to the LQ Linux Distributions Forum, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?s=&forumid=5, Slackware, RedHat Mandrake, Debian, and several other distros have their own special forums. Unfortunately, SuSE and Gentoo do not have their own forums at this time :(
For the question of Why No SuSE Forum?, see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=86542
It has over 330 replies(!) up to the present.

IMHO, there are a few things I would observe in these LQ distro-specific forums related to Mikhail_16's point:

1) How many forum questions are really more general questions about installing and using Linux rather than questions specific to any particular distro ? Note: LQ does have a beginners/n00b forum at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...p?s=&forumid=8

2) How many posts are really discussions of new distro features, new distro utilities, distro comments or distro announcements rather than any specific distro-related problems ?
Example:For a Slackware-forum post by member 'shilo', http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...readid=174447, there were over 25 pages of replies (280+ messages)!!! From reading a sample of these replies, the majority seemed to be notes of commendation and gratitude for shilo's efforts in this post.

3) How many posted questions which are actually problem-related can be resolved within the provided documentation of a given distro, rather than posted at LQ (RTFM!) ?


-nycace36