Version of Linux

wolfman

I'm switching back to the Linux scene but have had problems with Fedora Core 3 64 as I've got an nForce3 motherboard and SATA drives, which is known to cause problems with Fedora.

I will get Fedora working, but thought it'd be a good chance to try out another Linux distro other than the Red Hat/Fedora family. I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

I was thinking about trying SUSE 64, although the Pro version is no longer free which is annoying, or possibly Mandriva or Gentoo.

Oh, and anyone know of any good UK mirrors that I could download of for maximum speeds.

blinky

Gentoo is reckoned to be the most hardcore as the instructions get you to compile a kernel, configure fstab, boot loader etc.

http://www.mirror.ac.uk/mirror/ UK Academic mirror service has most distrobutions.

Don't know about NForce S-ATA compability, you'd need to do some checking on that. (I usually run linux in VMware)

wolfman

Yeah I've run Gentoo before, and yeah I found it quite hardcore. Think I might try SUSE 9.2 64. I'll double check nForce3 chipset compatability though

DVB_3

Allmost all Linux distros have originally been created with a specific purpose in mind. You can see and compare them here

Download - I always use ReGet Deluxe (https://www.reget.com) for such downloads. It automatically searches for mirrors, and can also download by sections, which allows for full bandwidth utilisation, irrespective of the server's speed restrictions (provided multiple connections are not prohibited, or enough mirrors are in place).

newfoundglory

I suggest you look at FreeBSD ... its not Linux but you will probably like it.

However, I don't know the exact details on this, but I think the current FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE had an issue which was discovered after release on 64-bit systems which required a small change to the kernel.

I don't have a 64-bit system, but I hightly recommend you try FreeBSD which is built as a whole operting system (with BSD kernel of course)... rather than Linux which is just the Linux kernel surrounded by who knows how many distrubutions doing something different with it.

You might wanna hang out until FreeBSD 5.4 is released which expected to come out of RC-3 any day now... Stick with the FreeBSD 5 branch as it has good driver support - much better than 4.

culpepper

Linux magazine has a bootable DVD of Suse Linux 9.2 32bit and 64 bit versions.
The magazine is £5.99 in WHSmiths.