• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

what issues should I expect with linux?

F

Falloutboy

Diamond Member
well I've been thinking about giving linux a shot. but woundering if I have any hardware that could make linux cranky so my specs are as follows:

Athlon XP Mobile @ 2.5ghz
Abit NF7-S
512mb ram
ATI 9100 128mb (running Primary monitor)
Matrox G400 PCI (running 2 secondary monitors)

Using intergrated networking, sound, sata, ide, usb, and possibly in the future firewire

also what distro should I go with as a first timer? I've heard good things about Gentoo but I've heard its also a bit involved to install...
 
Try a knoppix live cd. You'll probably want a 2.6 kernel though, so you might want to wait for SuSE 9.1 or use Mandrake 10. Not sure what else is using a 2.6 kernel...
 
People usually have problems with ATI cards, but I think that 9100 is supported by free drivers from the DRI project.

That Matrox should work well.

Both cards should actually be pretty nice in Linux. Never used either myself though so I can't be certain. check out here for some info on those, and the driver names to check out

The NF7-s is a nforce2 board? They can be a pain if you use the onboard NIC. They use propriatory drivers only aviable from nvidia's website (distros are not allowed to distribute them themselves, but people have worked on free versions), So if your going to make sure that you have some local copy of the driver downloads before you start the install.

The best solution is to have another PCI nic card like a old 3com card or a realtek-based card. Actually most ethernet cards work well on linux, these nforce on-board nics can be a pain, but once you get them working it's fine. Stick it in if you have a spare one laying around, otherwise burn a cd with the nforce driver downloads first and be sure to have a copy of the install README.

Setting up your 3 monitors will probably work out fairly good. Linux was supporting multiple monitors a while before windows (well win98 could to a extent, but it sucked royally).

But in order to get it just right you may have to end up editting the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file manually in order to get it just right. It depends on how smart the installer is. Also look into the GUI configuration tools commonly aviable in start menus and such.

I suggest installing Fedora. It's a common one and probably the most popular one, or at least will be in short order. It's basicly Redhat 10, but the situation changed slightly for Redhat and Fedora is the free version now.



 
Originally posted by: drag
People usually have problems with ATI cards, but I think that 9100 is supported by free drivers from the DRI project.

That Matrox should work well.

Both cards should actually be pretty nice in Linux. Never used either myself though so I can't be certain. check out here for some info on those, and the driver names to check out

The NF7-s is a nforce2 board? They can be a pain if you use the onboard NIC. They use propriatory drivers only aviable from nvidia's website (distros are not allowed to distribute them themselves, but people have worked on free versions), So if your going to make sure that you have some local copy of the driver downloads before you start the install.

The best solution is to have another PCI nic card like a old 3com card or a realtek-based card. Actually most ethernet cards work well on linux, these nforce on-board nics can be a pain, but once you get them working it's fine. Stick it in if you have a spare one laying around, otherwise burn a cd with the nforce driver downloads first and be sure to have a copy of the install README.

Setting up your 3 monitors will probably work out fairly good. Linux was supporting multiple monitors a while before windows (well win98 could to a extent, but it sucked royally).

But in order to get it just right you may have to end up editting the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file manually in order to get it just right. It depends on how smart the installer is. Also look into the GUI configuration tools commonly aviable in start menus and such.

I suggest installing Fedora. It's a common one and probably the most popular one, or at least will be in short order. It's basicly Redhat 10, but the situation changed slightly for Redhat and Fedora is the free version now.
Click to expand...

Any clue on how tough SATA is with Linux? That was a bigger concern for me looking at his setup than the motherboard chipset.

And I've used both (AGP) the Matrox 400 and 450 and LOVED them. They're my first choice in video card manufacturers 😉
 
Any clue on how tough SATA is with Linux?
Click to expand...

Nope. Never used SATA before.

I figured with a newer kernel it would have SATA support as default. I guessed Fedora Core1 was new enough.

And Fedora is actually one of the better designed Distros out there, better then Mandrake, Suse, or Gentoo from what I've seen, from a technical/initial usability standpoint. (maybe not so much Suse, but I installed 9.2 mandrake for a friend and I was dissapointed about it a bit with the configuation utilities and whatnot.)

(Mostly because Fedora is making sure to have correctly working packages and updates aviable thru the default Yum, and otherwise well supported Apt package managers)

I just thought that SATA would be along the lines of stuff like AGP 8x, which on older distros would be a pain, but nowadays wouldn't be a big issue.
 
I'd go to www.linuxiso.org and download the Suse 9 Liveinstall cd. Burn it to disk, and you'll have a Linux system that runs off the CD, so it's slow but you can make sure everything works. (On my Averatec laptop, everything was detected and worked fine -- including sound, which I thought was cool). If you like it, you can always download the 20MB ftp-install iso image as well.

(I just prefer Suse to Mandrake, and Redhat pissed me off with the whole Fedora thing. Seems easier to get a feel for Linux with than Debian...)
 
last time i checked, only suse had the multi-head GUI setup... it can be a pain setting it up manually via xf86config, so try suse first
 
The 2.6 kernel has built in support for the nforce2 nic with the forcedeth driver. So since you have an nforce2 board i would recommend that you get mandrake 10 or any other distro that installs 2.6 by default (are there any others?).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top