I want to insall Linux on my computer. It will be a dual boot with WinXP. I'm not sure which distro to get. I already have the Mandrake 10 ISO's burned to CD's, but if you think there is a better one then it wouldn't be a problem to download and burn them.

I attempted to install Mandrake from my CD's after changing the boot device in my BIOS to the CD drive. Everything seemed to be going fine until it couldn't find my hard drive. This is because I have a SATA hard drive. My motherboard is an ASRock K8S8X which uses the SIS 755 northbridge and the SIS 964 southbridge. The 964 is also the SATA controller. I found a beta patch here:

w w w.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/libata/

I'm guessing that I would need the 2.6.5 since I have Mandrake 10. However I don't know which one of those files I need, much less how to go about inserting it into one of my ISO's or how to recompile if necessary etc...

Is there an easy way to get past this hurdle?

Thanks,
Steve

cant help you, but i got the same problem ... want to install linux (suse/fedora/mandrake...) to a sis (asrock k7s8xe+) system and a sata-hd.
And no, i dont have any other harddisks i could install the system first.

Use: Kanotix Distribution

http://kanotix.com
its a Knoppix like - Live CD, but you can also install on your Harddisk

very well done Distro!

download image, burn it, test it, get access to your SATA Partitions and love it!

Ronnsn
ASRock K7S8XE+ (SIS964) with SATA Harddisk