[Wolves] Linux for idiots

[mad-malc at tiscali.co.uk]

On  Fri, 20 May 2005 10:11:45
Kevan wrote
  9 times out of 10 hardware works out of the box with XP or
>Win2k.  Or, it has done in my experience.
Ok, everyone has different experiences from which we all learn, but as I
said in my post I couldn't send the results in .PDF format, nor did I elaborate
on the test vehicle. I was aiming for a straight install, no resorting to
3rd party driver discs, the specification of the machine is modest the peripjerals
is the usual oddball collection we acquire over time. The Spec of the machine
is:
Mobo Gigabyte GA7 DXE
Ram 768MB
processor Athlon 2400xp
Ethernet lan pci card
5.1 cheapo sound card
Nvidia FX5200
USB 2.0 expansion card
Leadtek pvr 2000 TV card
Black widow 1248 scanner
Epson C44ux printer
Intel Web CAM
Microsfot game pad
Geius optical mouse
Cheapo qwerty ket board
NEC e228 mobile
pre existing LAN network

So doing a Distro style WinXP instal,l the XP Pro didn't have drivers for
the USB  controller chip on the mobo ,and none of the PCI cards. All of the
Linux distro's fared better.
However the live CD distro I thought was the Dogs doodahs, and would have
beaten a drum for didn't even boot on my second self build bog standard 32
bit machine , whereas the PClinuxOS disc I thought was a duff disc did. If
I had not inadvertenly discovered the hardware support problem and had run
my test on that machine (which I didn't encumber with so much hardware) I
would have been beating a similar misplaced drum for PClinuxOS.
Also I have a SCSI/ IDE expansion card (no longer installed hence the original
40GB hard drive which is sitting in machine but only plugged in for experiments)
that SUSE will not tolerate.
I consider myself to be a newbie in that there is still much to learn, I
tended to trash my computer quite regularly for the first few years and now
have a dedicated  hard disk for what some might describe as weird experiments,
that' the way I learn.

Mad Malc




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