I am looking to build a system to load Red Hat v7.2. This is my first experience with Linux EVER!

I want to use parts I found on TigerDirect.com, but none of the parts I want are on the Red Hat HCL.

If I buy them, will they work?

If not, can someone recommend me a site where I can go to buy Linux compatible hardware? What do you folks use?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Practically all IDE hard drive types and cdroms work. Probably most SCSI will work also. All hardware modems work (watch out for pci slot modems know as winmodems)
Most of the popular network cards work. Most printers. Zip Drives work. Pentium or AMD should be ok. Monitors that are not detected can be configured to work if you know what you have. Most of them will be detected.

One of the main things to worry about would be video, check for video cards that you are considering to see if there's any problems you don't want to deal with. Especially if you plan to play certain games.
Be carefull about USB products, some work and some dont.
If your gonna get a camera make sure it's supported.

Some motherboards have on board raid controllers, they should work but may be a pain to get installed. They require a special kernel on some of them.

Most popular sound cards work.


The best thing to do is look at what you are about to buy and see if you can find something that says it does not work.


I have installed linux on many systems with no problems, and everything worked.

If it's a laptop make sure you check it out first. Many have hardware that will not work, like floppys and modems.

I'm a little embarrassed to ask but what's HLC? Some type
of "high availablity clustering"?

Please do not double post, and this is clearly in the wrong forum as well. http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php

Oh and pickledbeans, HCL means most likely.. Hardware Compatibilty Lists.