Hardware support

[Stickman]

Greetings.
I'm still in the process of re-selecting a Linux distribution. I started out with Alinux, have tried out Pnut a little, and PCLinuxOS a little more extensively. I'm currently downloading Debian (frigging huge, that...3 DVD's) and Ubuntu.

The problem I seem to be having is fairly limited hardware support. From what I've read online, this seems to be fairly common, but most seem to manage to work through it in some fashion.

What I'd like to possibly do is find a distro that's fairly compatible with my hardware. I have an ATI Radeon x700 128 (PCI-E, made by Visiontek, but is supposed to be completely compatible with these drivers I have), and a Kn8 motherboard with the AC97 onboard sound controller. These seem to be the only two problematic items. USB all works, drive controllers all work, have no problem connecting to the internet (I was worried that using a gateway like I do would be a problem, but it works perfectly every time, though I had to change config a few times in Alinux to get it up...took only a few minutes). I've tried installing the ATI Linux drivers according to various instructions I've found on the internet, but nothing seems to work. Are there other drivers available that work better than those from ATI? Or maybe another way to install? Or as I'm hoping, maybe a distro that has native support?

I confess to being very inexperienced in Linux, yet while I'm sure I'll learn it in time, I really do need video and sound support, and there appears to be very little documentation online available regarding the specific problems I'm having. As of yet, I'm still mostly lost at a console prompt...oh, I can do basic things, but configuring drivers from a text prompt is still a little beyond me, I'm afraid.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Get me out of my Windows-induced hell, please, and into a kinder, gentler (and cheaper) Linux world.

[oz]

I'm currently downloading Debian (frigging huge, that...3 DVD's) and Ubuntu.

You don't need all those CDs/DVDs to install Debian. In fact, the best way to install Debian (if you have a fast connection) is to do the netinstall:

Debian -- Network install from a minimal CD

That way, you install only the packages you need/want on your machine.

[Stickman]

You don't need all those CDs/DVDs to install Debian. In fact, the best way to install Debian (if you have a fast connection) is to do the netinstall:

Debian -- Network install from a minimal CD

That way, you install only the packages you need/want on your machine.

Nope, connection just isn't fast enough. DSL that barely makes 312k or so. Supposed to be 512/256. I pay $40 a month for it, but have sub-par performance. Still, it's the only game in the area.

Anyway, I'd rather have all three DVD's and not need 'em, than need 'em and not have 'em. It should only take about 10 or 12 days of downloading overnights to get them all. I can download a regular ISO in about 6.5 hours or so. Not too bad of a wait.

[bigtomrodney]

The thing is with the net install you may only end up using 7-800MB in total. The 14(ish) discs represents the entire catalog. Personally for ease of hardware I have found Ubuntu to be the best, followed by openSUSE. I only rate openSUSE second because of their policy on firmware blobs and ndiswrapper. On the other hand when something (if ever) goes wrong in Ubuntu, openSUSE would beat it by having YaST for configuration.