I just upgraded to fedora core 3 - now i cant get my usb modem drives to install they worked fine on fedora core 1.

Is fedora any good? I have read the guide on this forum and Its a bit confusing with all the distros out there - see below

bbspot.com/News/2000/4/linux_distros.html

I'm not exactly a n00b - i mean, i can mount drives, set up php, install drivers etc. What I want is an OS that will work, and have little to no compatability issues with drivers and stuff.

On fedora, after I finally managed to kill X, i tried installing the nvidia drivers and it said it didnt like my kernal. I have 2.6 installed. On FC1 - the drivers compained cause I had 2.4

CAN Y0U EVER WIN WITH LINUX???

All I want is a good distro, with PHP and mysql - that my usb modem drivers will install on and that i can run the odd game on.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give me some useful information!!

btw - the link above is a joke

got windows?

well... i guess i'll take a small shot at this... FC is billed as "unstable" but does have good HW support. fact is that you're bound to run into these problems in linux. if that's unacceptable to you, windows would be the *only* answer. but if you're willing to run into the occassional hiccup during use, perhaps another main-stream distro would work better for you.

ok - granted. The issue with the modem drivers I can understand. Its a dodgy no name usb thing. But it worked fine in FC1

BUT

The issue with the NVIDIA drivers in unbelieveable.... first it tells me that to install em, i need kernal version 2.6 - then it tells me that there is something wrong with my kernal version!!!!

What would be the best mainstream distro, with excellent hardware support?

All I need is stability. Its just a LAMP system (Linux Apache Mysql Php) used for a bit of development, but i like to dabble in the world of linux gaming as well.

Oh, and of course I want the standard set of appz - open office, CD burning tools etc...

Yea, I know... I want everything

i'll keep out of this thread at this point... i know suse and mandrake are popular, and should be easy, but i've not run them... i prefer to choose distros for other reasons, hence my setteling on slack... so, good luck!

mate - any info you could provide would be very useful. whats slax like? I hear its quite popular....

yeah, it's great... but i'm not really trying to push the HW envelope, and i've been around linux for a while...

i've heard good things about ubuntu (or whatever)... the people who use it swear by it... and mepis is really moving fast.

so my suggestion is to start trying these distros out -- take them for a test-drive if you have the time/bandwidth. otherwise ask around, check the distro section of this site, and see if you can't find a better fit.

Ya know I've tried 'em all, I think. USED to do it kinda for a hobby. I started to get tired of it after Fedora 3. You really need to spend a few nights getting Fedora installed with some kind of "Installation Guide" like that found on www.fedoranews.org by Stanley somebody. I've gone through this with all 3 Fedoras. Then there's updates like every other day for Fedora cause they want to be so bleeding edge. So if you have dial up then you will spend more time doing upgrades than using it.
So I found Mepis. Installed it dual boot with XP. Know what? It just works. MP3, Xine, Synaptic, access to NTFS files on the XP partition...
and when I clicked "Nvidia" under the display setting, it said I needed one file. It was small. Downloaded, and BAM. All OK. Java...it's all there. I just installed FC3 a few nights ago and I finally got it working, but only after I replaced my TNT2 Nvidia with a Geforce cause TNT2 won't work with the 2.6.9 kernel. Don't get me wrong, Fedora is nice looking but if you just want to use Linux, get Mepis. I think the same thing can be said of Ubuntu. It really comes down to this:
If you like KDE, get Mepis.
If you like Gnome, get Ubuntu.
They are ready to roll. It reminds me of way back when cake mixes were marketed where you just added water and you were ready to go. They didn't sell well so they made them so that you added one egg and they sold like crazy.
That's like Fedora. It's nice to play around with it and learn some stuff and that's OK and you can say to yourself "wow, I got it working!!" but
I am getting tired of it. I actually boot to MEPIS on my laptop and USE IT! My one and only gripe is that you have to be careful about what you upgrade with Debian packages or you'll break it. Mepis needs their own repos, IMO. I think I will just do security updates and do the common upgrades, like APT or maybe XMMS....small stuff. Definitely no apt-get distro upgrade!

Here here Craig I also Settled for Duel boot with XP/Mepis 6.5
I found 6.5 the easiest and most stable after ironing out couple local issues And trying many other Linux OS It runs easy (point click copy paste )just like XP
Bobp

Did you mean to post onto a 3 yr old thread?

OOOPPP's Missed date