Please can someone answer the following questions as i do love my Linux but can't seem to get these points to work, although ther's no problem under Windows.

I have an ATI Radeon graphics card with 3D acceleration, Linux tells me that this function is not available.

I have an Asus K8V board with on-board sound which won't so much as beep!

My Epson CX3200 works but is far slower than under Windows.

I am running Mandrake 9.0 and have built A PC around the AMD64 chip, i would like to upgrade my Mandrake distro' but don't see the point if the hardware won't work.

I also bought Suse pro' v 9.0 for the AMD64 but this also doesn't work, in fact the printer is worse although it seems to be the same driver, (in fact hardly anything works with Suse, can't even access my CD/DVD).

Please help and someone tell me when i can buy a distro' which is as compatible as Windows, i didn't have to do anything with Windows, it all just worked!

Thanks in advance

Eric

Well, the fact is that Linux is not ready for "prime time" and will not be for anyone but programmers for some time - that is my disappointed conclusion after trying SuSE 9 last year and finding more stuff that would not work than would. If you want a stable platform for surfing, it was great, but if you wanted to do much else, forget it!

For example, Open Office would not work with the envelope slot in my HP Deskjet 970 printer without making a special template to space the stuff right on the envelope and the ink status monitor would not work at all. Furthermore, CUPS kept losing the driver for the printer, and the only way I could get it to work most of the time then was to do a system restore from my last backup of the Linux partition. I posted a question on another forum about this, and a moderator who is obviously an expert conceded that the same thing happened to him periodically . . . I flat don't see how whole companies and cities are switching to Linux . . .

And now watch the firestorm this reply will produce!

Karl

KarlT - if you want to post criticism of Linux, do in the the General forum, not here in Hardware. The purpose of this forum is to answer technical questions, not debate whether or not Linux is "ready for prime time". Sorry if you've had trouble with Linux in the past but please don't attempt to start any "firestorms" here.

blastradius - Welcome to LQ. It would be helpful if you were to provide the specific model numbers of the equipment you are using, as that would allow people to provide more detailed answers. As general comments though:

1. 3D support for Radeon 9500's and above is not supported by ATI. This issue has nothing to do with Linux, and everything to do with ATI's engineering decisions. You can read more info about this topic here

2. Non-functioning sound is often the result of either a necessary kernel module not being loaded, or a configuration issue, where the soundcard has not been initialized. Try running this command
which will attempt to configure your soundcard. You may also need to run alsamixer which sets the volume levels for numerous pieces of equipment.

3. If you are running into problems with printing the best resource for that is LinuxPrinting. Good luck with it -- J.W.