Will Debian run on my Laptop, Acer Aspire 9500
 

ive had Ubuntu for about 2 months and ive been in linux for about 3, i have been diving head first though and id say i have com pretty far as to learning how it works and that sort of thing, i can use the command line alright

i have two questions, the first, is how hard will it be for me to get media codecs for mp3, dvd and other non open source codes and software, i understand debian has something with it doesnt give any support or something with non open source software, and will it run without much configuration on my laptop, im not sure how to install drivers for things but i would be willing to because i like to learn



Here are my results of Lspci

Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc.: Unknown device 001a (rev 01)
CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller (rev 10)

any help would be good before i make the switch

If Ubuntu works for you then stay with it for a while. You will learn more by staying with one distribution. Distribution hopping is better after you are comfortable with a lot of other Linux issues.

If you want a distribution that plays multimedia files then I recommend PCLinuxOS. Unfortunately this is a bad time to try them out because they are about to release a new version. Nevertheless you could try out their live CD for RC4.
http://pclinuxos.com
http://pclinuxos.org

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