hey guys, my first stab at Linux was waaay long ago with my BP6 with dual Celeron 366's. Learned to compile the kernel etc.. Got it running decently.

Going to use XP for games and Vista because it's a train wreck.. can't look away from that nightmare.

System...
Asus maximus formula
Quad 6600
1066 OCZ 4gb
Xfire 3870's going to upgrade to x2 when available.
4x320gb in raid 0


What distro do you guys recommend?

Most important.. That it installs on the raid setup.. that's where I gave up the last few times.

Thanks!

Wow. Nice system!

I have no experience with RAID, but as far as recommending distros, the usual will be Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. I'd personally recommend Fedora above the other two. Check out their respective sites for RAID info.

RAID-0? How are you backing that up, how often do you
do that? RAID-0 over four drives is insane if there's any
data that's dear to you on the system.

And to come back to the technicalities: is this an ACTUAL
RAID-controller, or one of those pseudo ones? Does it
mimic a single drive to the BIOS?



Cheers,
Tink

I have 2 x 1TB of external USB drives for backup and PVR - I'm also using it for a dish setup. Main screen is a 120hz 52in Samsung.. I bought myself a xmas present Crysis is eye candy!!

The raid is onboard intel matrix, so I assume it's the pseudo kind you mention. More for speed rather than redundancy. I downloaded Ubuntu last night, going to try it after work today. Any tips on getting it to install on the raid array?

Thanks guys.

I used to be a Fedora fiend but, primarily because of the sheer number of available packages, I'm now a Ubuntu convert.
If your RAID is set up in the BIOS ie before an OS gets in the way, then Ubuntu should see that drive and allow you to install to it.

That should suffice ;}

Speed and no need for integrity being the only reason for
a RAID-0, ever! ;} As for the install: I haven't got a
clue, I've only ever used a) SCSI-RAID controllers or b)
software RAID.



Cheers,
Tink


P.S. Can you please do me a favour an NOT top-post
with the quotes? :}

For those of us too poor to afford h/w like that, & therefore not up on such stuff, how about some links? Then we can drool & envy.

And in case I missed it, what's the final answer to the "fake" (pseudo) RAID Q? A link would help. IMO a very important Q, if only because of driver issues.

The standard advice when dealing w/ "fake" RAID chips is to treat them as add'l disk controllers & use Linux s/w RAID. I have some, very limited, experience w/ this.

AFAIK, Linux cannot be installed on a s/w RAID 0 array. Tinkster asked the key Q: "Does it mimic a single drive to the BIOS?" If your chip can do this, present a single drive to the BIOS, then just install. If, as we suspect, not, then you need a tiny boot drive or boot partition(s) to get a kernel running that can see the (s/w) RAID array.

I recently bought a HighPoint RocketRaid 133 board & decide that claimed to support Linux, I eventually decided that messing w/ their driver wasn't worth it, so it's being used as an overpriced disk controller.

As for distro, I have 2 Q's:
Dual-boot or VM?
Desktop or what?

My current personal preferences are Debian Etch, SimplyMEPIS 6.0 moving toward 7, & AntiX -- the new slim ver. of SimplyMEPIS.

You might just about have room for DSL or Puppy Linux on that setup.