What to do when you suspect the distro doesn't support your motherboard?

[mozkill]

I had trouble installing from a standard bootable FTP SUSE disc because the newer distro doesn't support my motherboard (via82xx). The install hangs somewhere when the disc controller gets accessed at the beginning of the installation.

Is there a linux distro that will let me boot up on a LIVE disc and somehow let me know if it supports my motherboard? Does anyone know how I might go about this? Some of the other distros do not seem to have very clear hardware support lists.

Would you suggest I try a bootable FTP installer from another distrobution or is there a cleaner easier way? Are there any distrobutions that will allow me to mirror the LIVE CD to the disc so that I can sorta avoid the package-by-package install process?

Should I try to pick my favorite distro and create my own custom kernel on a bootable CD with support for my board? Any ideas on how to do this easily or which distro might be easiest to try it with?

[LondoJowo]

What motherboard do you have?

[mozkill]

its the MSI K7T266 Pro2. it has the VIA® VT8233 (376BGA) controller. the SUSE HCL says that only SUSE 8.1 is compatible and nothing later than that. I would like to be able to use SUSE 9.x or another newer distro with my board...

my guess right now would be to install SUSE 9.3 on a vmware image, recompile a compatable kernel in that image and then make a bootable install CD out of the recompiled kernel? is this easy to do?

[LondoJowo]

Maybe you should try using the no-acpi switch when installing SuSE 9.3

[IsaacKuo]

Is there a linux distro that will let me boot up on a LIVE disc and somehow let me know if it supports my motherboard?

Knoppix based LiveCDs are one and the same as the install discs. My prefered Knoppix variant is Mepis. If you can boot up and get the hardware working, it'll work when you install to hard drive also.

Would you suggest I try a bootable FTP installer from another distrobution or is there a cleaner easier way?

Well, since you bring it up I do recommend the Debian (stable) FTP installer. It might not have as good hardware detection as Mepis, but if you're familiar with Linux already you may prefer a "clean" Debian system rather than Mepis, which is cluttered with a whole lot of stuff (which is newbie friendly, but a pain to clean up).

Are there any distrobutions that will allow me to mirror the LIVE CD to the disc so that I can sorta avoid the package-by-package install process?

Knoppix based distributions like Mepis essentially do exactly that. More precisely, they copy the existing file system including what's in the ramdisc to account for any post boot-up configuration you may have done (e.g. network card configuration). Thus, you can first configure your hardware just how you like it and then you won't have to redo your efforts after doing the hard drive install.

In addition, the installer makes some adjustments made like configuring more traditional users, your desired machine name, and changing to a hard drive bootloader.