[cai-sa] Re: [Cbsupport] Which Distro?

[Roland Bernett]

Hi Everyone

Its good to see some have no problems with Debian and hardware.

I can sharpen my comments to say that the situation is highly variable
and if you have trouble you can have trouble in a big way.

I recently tried to install Debian (latest stable release) on a desktop
with AMD 2600+, 512 MB RAM and 40 gb HDD. Peripherals included 3 network
interfaces (2 on board and a gigabit card), an ATI video card, onboard
sound and a USB mouse. None of this hardware is very new, all has been
around for over 18 months (except the gigbit NIC).

Debian did not recognise any of the peripherals listed except the
onboard 3COM network interface (fortunately). I had to get the Linux
version of the ATI drivers from the ATI site. The mouse had to be
swapped to a PS/2 one. Finally got a GUI (with the help of a friend who
knows RPM better than I) but the mouse is still flakey. No sound as yet.

Have stopped working on the install for the moment because of other
commitments.

It has been quite a journey, one which I suspect many would not choose
to take as newbies to Linux.

Debian is NOT for newbies or those with PDS (patience deficiency
syndrome).

Cheers

Roland
 

-----Original Message-----
From: cai-sa-bounces at cbnsw.org.au [mailto:cai-sa-bounces at cbnsw.org.au]
On Behalf Of Romana Branden
Sent: Friday, 2 July 2004 7:00 AM
To: cbsupport at lists.linux.org.au
Cc: CAISA; Peter Gossner
Subject: [cai-sa] Re: [Cbsupport] Which Distro?

On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 10:42:43PM +1000, David Robb imparted:
> On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 02:26 pm, Roland Bernett wrote:
> I think you underestimate the hardware support in Debian. Based on my 
> experiences, it's mainly new hardware you have to worry about. I know
I've 
> never owned a computer that has hardware Debian can't deal with.

having just set up my shiny brand new athlon 2600 acer laptop, let me
assure you that debian has NO issues with new hardware that i've
noticed.

i havent had debian let me down with the older hardware we get here, or
newer stuff ive had a chance to play with.

we use fedora here currently. tried mandrake. easy to install, sure, but

the bloat of both, given the small amount of hdd space (the std install
takes up AT LEAST 2gb) we have to play with often is migrating us
back to debian - the flexibility, the ease of configuration, the ability
to create a neat customised install is everything. pete gossner is
working on it here.

> 
> Due to the non-free status of Lindows, as well as various other issues

> including security, I'd personally recommend against that.

users are auto root. *shudder*. the support horror of it all....

> 
> Another option that Computerbank Victoria has been toying with lately
is 
> Knoppix. It's a very user friendly Debian-based distro with excellent 
> hardware support designed to run completely from a CD without any need
for a 
> hard drive, but it can be installed to hard drive if you like. It does
have 
> its downside; the hard drive install requires a hard disk partition
larger 
> than 2GB, and the entire system is copied from the CD, including quite
a lot 
> of packages that aren't really necessary for a computer being sent out
by 
> Computerbank. Once you go through and remove all the unnecessary
stuff, it's 
> quite well-suited for Computerbank use.


ive installed it on two machines now. the same machines were then
migrating to straight debian, with same packages. the speed
difference!!! knoppix is bloaty and a bit too slow for my taste.
but hey, its a quick type of debian. 
what was that about debian hw support again?;)  )


hth, r:)
-- 
Romana Branden
ITShare SA Inc/ComputerbankSA 
http://itshare.org.au/
ITShare SA gives away computer systems 
created from donated hardware and opensource software.