Re: distro choice for A7N8X Deluxe mobo

From: Crashdamage (03z1krd7_at_nospam.invalid)
Date: 11/30/03

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    Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 12:59:55 GMT

    On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:52:51 +0000, Derek Turner <somewhat@odds> wrote:

    > From what I read here Madrake 9.2 has huge issues with the nForce2
    > chipset, which is a pity as I like the look and feel of Mandrake.

    Not necessarily true...read on...

    > Redhat 9 recognizes the 3Comm LAN port but not the NVidia one. Won't
    > read my NTFS partitions. Not very keen on the way it works/looks/feels
    > either.

    > SuSE claim compatibility on their site but in one box it says 'full'
    > and underneath (under 9.2) 'unknown' so I'm confused. Like the look
    > and feel of SuSE but it can be a bugger to add programs to if they
    > dont come on the distro disks! WineRack sounds interesting, though.

    > Xandros? lot of money, is it worth it? claims compatibility with the
    > on-board sound and the 3Comm LAN but nothing else. New version out
    > soon - will it be nForce ready?

    I just built a system yesterday (writing this with it now, notice my
    uptime) built on a Asus A7N8X-X, a nearly identical board to yours. All
    the problems you hear about with these boards and various distros are
    only have to do with the onboard LAN and sound. The basic board will
    work fine. From what I've seen, I doubt any distro will play perfectly
    nice with these boards *if* you use onboard stuff. They can be made to
    work with Mandrake or probably any other distro, but it takes some
    effort.

    As for me, I've got plenty of PCI nic cards and use a Creative Extigy
    external soundcard, so I couldn't care less if I got the onboard stuff
    working or not. Actually, I don't understand why people put so much
    work into trying to make them go. I mean, nic cards are $5-10 and a
    sound card eqivilent to what's onboard maybe $15-20, so who cares?
    Anyway, I just disabled the onboard LAN and sound in the BIOS setup and
    installed the friggin' thing. No problem.

    But there's a kicker to the story...
    For this hardward upgrade, I was keeping the same HDs, video and PCI
    cards, and changing the box, processor, memory, and motherboard. I was
    all set to do a clean install/upgrade from Mandrake 8.2 to 9.2 to
    accomodate the new Asus board. Hated to do it 'cause I've got a *very*
    complicated, highly updated and customized 8.2 install that I'm still
    very happy with and it would take 1-2 days work to duplicate in 9.2.
    Besides, I really wanted to wait for the 2.6 kernel to come out and get
    nice and stable before I upgraded to a newer distro. Anyway, just for
    grins, after everything was assembled I thought I'd see what would
    happen if I tried to boot from my present install. Well, the kudzu
    hardware configuration tool kicked in, detected the new motherboard and
    processor, asked if would like to apply some new drivers for a few
    things - why, yes I would, thanks - and everything works! So I'm still
    using the same 8.2 install! And I'll be quite happy to keep it for a
    while longer. My hat's off to Mandrake on this one. I never expected
    my old 8.2 distro to handle this motherboard.

    So, I wouldn't worry much. Use the distro you like. I like Mandrake
    'cause it's free, totally customizable, comes with tons of nice
    up-to-date software, etc, but most importantly because Mandrake's urpmi
    package installer is the best there is for rpms. Makes installing rpms
    just like using apt-get in Debian. Mandrake will also handle NTFS
    partitioning and reading. No distro currently handles NTFS writing yet,
    though you can install a developmental NTFS writer to try. They're
    getting close with it, and will probably get 100% there soon, but for
    now it's still a risky proposition. 

    --
Registered Linux user #266531
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