> good Q. My guess is that people want more than just what is
> reported to work with Linux they want actual experiences.
Then a database accessible via WWW would do... and don't distributions
handle stuff like that? Note that it will be swamped with "XYZ doesn't
work" (or its moral equivalents), even for cases where it _does_ work
(because of user error, broken hardware, ...). Reports of what _does_ work
are hard to come by: My machine works, I'm a happy camper and don't go
hunting all over Internet to say so. Only if it doesn't, I'll start looking
around. So the Hardware-HOWTO and the compatibility lists of distributions
are still your first bet.
> Example: which cd burners work best under Linux or which network
> cards work best. Sure NE 2000 network cards are reported to
> work, but there are some NE clones that don't work as well as
> others, and this may not be discussed in detail in doc you refer
> to, but somoene on the list may have had experience with getting
> a card to work.
Exactly. "Noname NE2000 ISA clones mostly work, some break in mysterious,
sometimes quite entertaining ways" is all you'll get. A detailed,
brand-by-brand breakup is hard (because of the sheer number of brands
around), and even pointless: There have been cases of cards sold under the
same brand, model and so on, that were radically different in makeup.
> Another example would be which MB should one buy If I want ot
> set up a Quad processor system, or Dual processor system. Last
> time I read the hardware howto (its been a while) it said my MB
> was a good MB for SMP and Linux. However that was also with 2.0
> kernels.
For high(er) end machines, no HOWTO will be able to help you anyway. Best
bet is getting a local supplier and check the stuff out before buying, or
getting the machine form one of the shops that build Linux machines.
I recently bought a new machine, and it was quite a lot of checking
different sources (Red Hat's pages, XFree86, the various makers of the
pieces, HOWTOs, ...).
-- Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/