SUSE vs Mandrake vs . . .

[Glutzie]

I'm new, well never used Linux. Is that new enough? I hope to use most if not all my hardware. Has anyone had any experience with the following:

VIA chipsets
Geforce2
SBLive
Real Magic Hollywood decoder (DVD)
Adaptec SCSI AHA-2910C
HP CDR/W 9200i scsi
NIC Netgear FA310TX


and what version of Linux? Is the new Kernal ready for use (stability wise and all)?

Thanks

 

[TonyRic]

My recommendation for a Distro is Mandrake.

As for your hardware:

VIA chipsets ---> No problem
Geforce2 ---> No problem
SBLive --- > No problem
Real Magic Hollywood decoder (DVD) ---> No Drivers, keep a Win98 Partition if you actually use it.
Adaptec SCSI AHA-2910C ---> No problem
HP CDR/W 9200i scsi ---> I have an HP 9500i which is faster than yours so no problem
NIC Netgear FA310TX ---> No problem

So all in all you are in as good a shape as the majority of us, everything is fine except no DVD "YET". There are projects in the works but none have been released yet.

 

[BOFH]

Actually there are drivers for certain generations of the HollyWood card and the DXR+ card too. http://opensource.creative.com/

 

[Glutzie]

Thanks guys!!!

Regarding the burner, do I have to go get drivers and software? I didn't see them at the HP site. As a matter of fact they don't even support Win2K. You have to buy the upgrade. HP sucks for support.

Also I just downloaded the iso's for Mandrake 7.2. Now I think there is a choose of kernal (at least I saw that on the retail package) which is my best bet.

KDE or GNOME.

Thanks again!!!

 

[FOBSIDE]

kde and gnome are two different desktop environments. youll hear people argue for one and others argue for the other. i run gnome but i hear kde is faster. try both?

 

[MGMorden]

Agreed. Try both KDE and Gnome. I run KDE but could get along with Gnome just fine if KDE went under or something. They run the same software and such they just lay a different interface on top of X.

 

[Louie1961]

My recommendation is to try them all. If you have access to a broadband connection and a burner, you can download and try them all for free. In general I have been a Red Hat fan, but they have taken a beating lately as having released a buggy distro in 7.0. I don't buy it. Look at SuSe's web site or Mandrakes, and they have most of the same bugs on their bug reporting systems as well. There were two real bugs that I encountered (one with the installer program and one with the GCC compiler) and both were fixed promptly.

I have also tried SuSe 7 and Mandrake 7.2 recently. Hated Suse, couldn't get it to configure any of my hardware. Loved Mandrake 7.2, lots of proprietary configuration tools, and all very slick and accurate. My only gripe with Mandrake was that it wouldn't compile the 2.4 kernel. Keep getting various compliler and permission errors..real pain in the ass.

I am currently using a beta of Red Hat 7.1 and love it immensely.

 

[skriefal]

Strange. I'm using Mandrake 7.2, and I've compiled several versions of the 2.4.0 kernel (2.4.0-test10, 2.4.0-test11, 2.4.0, 2.4.0-ac2, 2.4.0-ac9, etc). All have compiled fine, with both gcc and kgcc.

 

[MGMorden]

Pardon me for my ignorance, but what is kgcc? (or rather how does it differ from gcc, since I can tell from context what it is)

 

[jtshaw]

dxr3.sourceforge.net has drivers for the HW+ and the DXR3. If you want you can check them out, they are still under development but they work alright for me.

 

[skriefal]

Mandrake 7.2 comes with two versions of the gcc compiler. The first is version 2.95.2 and invoked via the usual "gcc" command; the second is version 2.91.66 (IIRC, also called egcs-1.1.2) and is invoked via "kgcc". The latter is considered somewhat better tested, and more reliable for kernel compiles.

Some other distributions (such as RedHat 7.0) use the same gcc/kgcc setup.