[SC.LUG] Mandriva and network lock-ups

[Cockroft, John]

I have been using Linux on and off for years and my PCs have been
dual-boot for years but I have recently got so cheesed off with Windows
and Microsoft's attitude to consumers that I have decided enough is
enough and want to ditch Windows completely (except possibly on my
daughter's PC as dual boot due to the short sighted dependence that
schools now have on Microsoft software).  I might play with Cednega and
Crossover-Office on here to try and ditch Windows on this PC as well.

My favourite distros are:

* Fedora Core (my MythTV box runs FC4 - but I find the UI not friendly
enough for non-techies like my missus)

* Mandriva/Mandrake (used to use this until 10.0 came out)

* SuSE (nicest desktop - IMHO)

* Ubuntu (good basic desktop but hardware detection is not a patch on
FC, SuSE or Mandriva and I haven't managed to get it working on my
Athlon 64 system yet)

* SimplyMEPIS (excellent detection, but non-standard kernel is a pain
and UI admin tools a joke)

I would like to have a single distro across all my machines but
unfortunately I didn't do my homework well when picking my latest
motherboard (http://www.asrock.com/product/939S56-M.htm ) and the SiS
chipset is not well supported by many distros.

SuSE (latest beta) detects everything but the networking doesn't work
(despite messing with ifup scripts etc).  I really do like the look and
feel of SuSE but don't want the pain of recompiling kernels every time.

http://coyotesg.blogspot.com/2005/11/linux-tips-compiling-installing-lin
ux_12.html 

Mandriva detects everything and works (hooray!) but has a really
annoying problem that seems to occur on every machine I have put it on
(so it isn't directly related to that particular Ethernet adaptor).
(Before I go on the firewall is disabled by the way).

If I ping anything (and this applies to any machine I have run Mandriva
on) I get "No buffer space available".  This also happens after a while
(in any case).  If I leave the PC for a while then the LAN seems to
reactivate but is inconsistent and usually fails at some point.  No
other distribution seems to do this (which is a shame as otherwise I
quite like Mandriva).

Anyone any ideas (on fixing LAN access on Mandriva) or whether it's
worth waiting for the final release of Open SuSE 10.0?

John Cockroft.