[nine-hundred]

Hey, I was hoping I could get some advice on which distro to install, I want to install to my SATA drive, but a lot of the distros I've tried don't seem to recognize it and a few just seem to get stuck in some sort of loop trying to communicate with it. I think it's the mobo SATA controller's fault, my mobo is an ASUS k8n-e deluxe [specs] Anyways, at one point I had kubuntu running (ver 6.06.1 I think), I had to use pci=nommconf to get it to recognize though, but then GRUB messed up at one point... I didn't really like the package setup with kubuntu, maybe I'm more of a gnome person, anyways, I don't know much about this stuff, so that's why I'm here, does anyone have any suggestions for which distro I should go with, please?

[techieMoe]

We can't answer "which distro" for you. It's completely subjective which distro is better for which person.... That being said, if you've tried Kubuntu but like Gnome better, take a look at regular Ubuntu; it uses Gnome by default. The latest version is 6.10.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...ead-first.html

In general I'd recommend you make sure you're using the latest version of whatever distribution you take a look at.

That motherboard is fairly standard, so you shouldn't be having trouble with it. What are your other specs? (Harddrive, video card, anything else plugged into the computer?)

[nine-hundred]

Hey, thanks for the reply and the link, I'll look into ubuntu, I was more or less looking for suggestions for distros that people knew would work for my sata controller, because it causes so many issues, I'm pretty sure it is what is causing the trouble, because I would get messages like:

hda1: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0xff

and

insmod'ing module sata_nv failed at /usr/bin/perl-install/modules.pm line 302

depending on which distro I used...
and hd0 is my IDE drive, and I only have the two...
my IDE drive is a Samsung SP0802n
the SATA is a Samsung HD160JJ/P

and if you want any other specs, just ask and I'll dig them out, ok thanks for the info, I'll start reading up on that stuff now

[antidrugue]

Like techieMoe says, any nForce3 based motherboard should not be a problem with any distro (provided it uses a fairly recent Linux kernel).

Make sure you have the latest BIOS version (version 1011, from Asus Support Site).

Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) should sail along.

[nine-hundred]

Oh, ok, thanks, how newb-friendly is ubuntu edgy?

[antidrugue]

Originally Posted by nine-hundred

how newb-friendly is ubuntu edgy?

Certainly among the most friendly, along with Mandriva, Mepis and OpenSuse (and plenty of others).

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by nine-hundred

Oh, ok, thanks, how newb-friendly is ubuntu edgy?

Again, this is a hard question to answer. One person's "newbie friendly" isn't a universal concept. Ubuntu tries its best to be easy for new users, though, so it's probably better for you than Slackware (which is a good OS in its own right but absolutely does not try to make things easy).

Keep in mind that any discussion about what's "easy" and "not easy" are completely subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt.

[nine-hundred]

Yeah, haha, I suppose it is a subjective question, but I think you both pretty much answered it, I'm downloading it now, I had version of mandrake a fews years back, and it was pretty user friendly, so if this one is up there with mandriva, as long as the install goes well I should be good, thanks for all the quick answers everyone.