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I've just gone through the same thing with finding the right linux distro for me. I tried Mandrake 9.1, RedHat 9, Debian woody, Knoppix 3.2, and SuSE 8.2. I like SuSE the best and have found it the best and very easy to use for a former Windows user. YaST2 is very easy and I actually sort of prefer the FTP install now, after having done it. What I did is download the entire "8.2" folder to my non OS partition (NTFS) with Windows, then burned the boot disc, booted to it, and installed the NTFS module. The installation was fast and I didn't have to worry about having a bad burn or anything. Also if I want to add packages now all I do is open YaST2 and select them, then it just installs them. This isnt for the impatient or those without about 6GB of hard drive space to burn, but I found it great and once you get it set up how you like, you can always delete the install directory. To see if you like SuSE you can always download the live-demo disc. Good luck.
--Ryan

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: Motorheader
And why beyond me would my Intel NIC not be installed by default.

Because debian assumes you know about your hardware and know how to look for the appropriate kernel modules when it tells you to. Did you even read the install guide first or did you just blindly jump in?

But the Intel cards are so ubiquitous and the friggin warning that comes up during the install regarding the liklihood of already having a driver for my hardware. Plus I didn't just "blindly jump in" regarding the installation.

Great learning experience though, I guess.:disgust: I got done with the load and got the "OK" from Debian to reboot.

I can't imagine you learn all that much from just running the installer.

With the move to the GUI installation by most distros, it was almost refreshing to see good ol' fdisk type utility. The hurdle was not running Debian it, but to get it to run.

After that, I didn't even get a bootloader prompt, just a screen filled with scrolling 1's and 0's.

Nice

Nothing that booting from windows floppy and a little fdisk /mbr couldn't fix though.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Motorheader

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: Motorheader
And why beyond me would my Intel NIC not be installed by default.

Because debian assumes you know about your hardware and know how to look for the appropriate kernel modules when it tells you to. Did you even read the install guide first or did you just blindly jump in?

But the Intel cards are so ubiquitous and the friggin warning that comes up during the install regarding the liklihood of already having a driver for my hardware. Plus I didn't just "blindly jump in" regarding the installation.

Great learning experience though, I guess.:disgust: I got done with the load and got the "OK" from Debian to reboot.

I can't imagine you learn all that much from just running the installer.

With the move to the GUI installation by most distros, it was almost refreshing to see good ol' fdisk type utility. The hurdle was not running Debian it, but to get it to run.

After that, I didn't even get a bootloader prompt, just a screen filled with scrolling 1's and 0's.

Nice

Nothing that booting from windows floppy and a little fdisk /mbr couldn't fix though.

Booting into windows doesn't sound like much of a fix

 

[Farfrael]

Originally posted by: Spyro
There was a lengthy thread here, not to long ago about getting the promise100 controller working with debian. Glad you got started though

Hum, i did a search for that thread but couldn't find it ... could somebody be kind enough to provide me with a link ?

Thx in advance

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Farfrael

Originally posted by: Spyro
There was a lengthy thread here, not to long ago about getting the promise100 controller working with debian. Glad you got started though

Hum, i did a search for that thread but couldn't find it ... could somebody be kind enough to provide me with a link ?

Thx in advance

Viola!!!!

This should be what you need

 

[Motorheader]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: Motorheader

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: Motorheader
And why beyond me would my Intel NIC not be installed by default.

Because debian assumes you know about your hardware and know how to look for the appropriate kernel modules when it tells you to. Did you even read the install guide first or did you just blindly jump in?

But the Intel cards are so ubiquitous and the friggin warning that comes up during the install regarding the liklihood of already having a driver for my hardware. Plus I didn't just "blindly jump in" regarding the installation.

Great learning experience though, I guess.:disgust: I got done with the load and got the "OK" from Debian to reboot.

I can't imagine you learn all that much from just running the installer.

With the move to the GUI installation by most distros, it was almost refreshing to see good ol' fdisk type utility. The hurdle was not running Debian it, but to get it to run.

After that, I didn't even get a bootloader prompt, just a screen filled with scrolling 1's and 0's.

Nice

Nothing that booting from windows floppy and a little fdisk /mbr couldn't fix though.

Booting into windows doesn't sound like much of a fix

No argument there. But it wasn't something that the Debian/Lilo installation could resolve either. I could boot from the Debian floppy and get around that way, but that is not what I really intended to do.

Going to blow-off the RedHat installation and going to try the SuSe installation. Thank Goodness for DSL.

 

[Farfrael]

Originally posted by: Spyro

Originally posted by: Farfrael

Originally posted by: Spyro
There was a lengthy thread here, not to long ago about getting the promise100 controller working with debian. Glad you got started though

Hum, i did a search for that thread but couldn't find it ... could somebody be kind enough to provide me with a link ?

Thx in advance

Viola!!!!

This should be what you need

Thx a lot, i just couldn't find it ....

 

[Motorheader]

Okay - it's been a while. After trying many more distros than intended, I ended up with Caldera Openlinux 3.1.1 Workstation for a while. The kernel was 2.4.13 though - I was having a problem installing a software package and looked at recompiling my own kernel update. Not too daunting, but a bit more than I wanted to do now.

I've been running the latest SOT and looking at the kernel recompile further. SOT is pretty slick for what would be considered not being one of the top distros.