Recently I decided to give Linux a try again. I have an Abit NF7-S Rev. 2 motherboard, two SATA hard drives, a gig of ram, and an AMD mobile 2400+ (which is overclocked a bit). I would like to install Linux on one of the SATA drives.

Here are my requirements/desires:
1. Very SATA-friendly. Since I am new, I would like to be able to get it working without jumping through 50 different hoops.
2. A clean install with a MINIMUM of extra programs pre-installed.
3. Near-cutting edge (or) tried and true...recommendations here? I could go either way...
4. SPEED.
5. A fairly simple/easy install please since I am a newb; however, I am a comp-sci grad who has worked with computers for 14 years, so...
6. Actively being developed.

That said, I am mainly considering Slackware and Yoper. One is tried and true, the other new, fast, and exciting. I'll admit, my main concern is getting it on a SATA drive without too much fuss. I am leaning toward slack, but aren't there SATA issues with it? Any recommendations?

Edit: Vectorlinux was a consideration as well, though I've heard less about this distro.

I guess I won't have to worry about having too many recommendations to choose from. ^_^

Well, I am still debating what to do. The more research I do the more pissed I get that I didn't just buy an IDE drive for linux instead of an extra SATA drive.

Well, support for SATA is more a matter of the kernel than a distro as such - if it is built into the kernel, it will be supported. Personally I stay away from SATA for now, because I know the good rule of thumb when it comes to hardware is to wait at least a year or so after it becomes popular on Windows. I might move to SATA in a year... But if you want it now, just look for the most recent releases from the larger distros. Suse or Mandrake are a good bet, but Yoper is worth trying (I use Yoper myself, but not on SATA).

Really, the simplest thing to do for now is to stick to PATA. In some areas in life it pays to be an early adopter, but not in computing, and certainly not in computing on Linux!

Yeah, I hear ya about the early adopting. SATA is pretty sweet in general, at least on XP, so it should rock on Linux (in theory). I googled a bunch last night on Linux and SATA and understand it much better now...right on about the kernal.

This site explained it all very well to me: http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

Looks like I am going to have to switch my Mobo to legacy mode (effectively having my sata drives emulated as ata drives), install linux, then build a custom kernel w/ support for my SATA hardware (Silicon Image 3112), then switch out of legacy and back to SATA/regular mode. It seems like I will be using the libata driver in my custom kernel...somehow.

Right now, the custom kernel scares me a bit because I am a complete linux newbie. Does anyone know of a site with a walk-through of how to do this?

well there are a lot of generic guides on compiling a kernel, including one right here on Linuxquestions.org. But I would suggest deciding which distro you're going to use and then googling for instructions specific for your distro. You can also then search their own forums for some hints and instructions... The generic way should work on every distro, but some provide a bit of assistance that makes the process a bit easier, so you might as well take advantage of it. Make sure you're looking at instructions for 2.6 kernels, not the older 2.4 - configuration is quite different.
I would suggest having a go with Mandrake - it's not my favourite distro in general, but as a rule they do have a pretty good support for 'cutting edge' hardware, and they have a large community to draw information from.
Good luck

Thanks for the tips. Mandrake was the distro I tried a couple of years ago when I first tried linux...wasn't too impressed, so I think I'll try something different. I think I am going to try out Slackware, so now I just need to hunt down some info on compiling a kernel for it like you suggested.

Well, I would never dare to say anything against Slackware You won't have to search far for info - just head over to Slackware forum here and you'll find a guide to compiling 2.6 kernels right at the top. You probably found it already

i think you should go with mepis. it is debian based (which is a huge plus to me over rpm distros) and it's hardware detection is beautiful. Plus it's a LiveCD so you can in essence try before you "buy". It's also a cinch to install.