Can you trust your computer?

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by VON_CAPO

A few words for those who never had used Linux before.

Linux is a operating system very different to Windows.

Windows is monolithic and Linux modular.
This is the reason why there are so many Linux distros.
Each distro has a different flavor, this means they are composed by different modules (pieces of software).


In Linux security is priority #1, so install something, if you are a newbie, is tricky and sometimes a pain in the neck.

About the hardware:

Because Linux is Open Source, the vendors resist to liberate the source code of their drivers.
Install a piece of software with closed code is not an option --> nobody knows what has been programmed there.
And because of this, sometimes is a pain to get hardware to work.
Obviously always there is a way to get them work.

To be specific:
Only Nvidia has Linux drivers, and the releases are frequent.
For ATI, Linux does not care.

Printers:
Choose Hewlett Packard or Epson (but not the cheaper models)

Wireless:
Linux will not recognize your PCI card, you must configure it manually with an emulator called ndiswrapper and two files that you must copy from your Windows driver.
For experienced users only, sorry.

Wired:
No problems at all. And if you own a wired router, better.

RAID hard drives:
The last release of SUSE with kernel 2.6 has troubles with them at the installation.
But with Ubuntu everything is smooth.

All somewhat true. The lack of ATI drivers however used to be true. NVidia doesn't release many driver revs and neither does ATI for Linux. I have both manufacturers running on Gentoo and not perfectly happy with either, but satisfied would be closer to the point. Upon closer examination however, do you really need all these driver revs? I have yet to have an error in game on anything from UT to Doom 3 resulting from driver screwups.

For those interesting in a FAQ on ATI, here it is - http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst/linux.html

Why is everyone complaining about ATI on this subject? Simple, the drivers remain proprietary. Why you ask? Simple, to make them opensource would reveal to NVidia certain ways the ATI cards operate. I understand both camps on this one - The OpenSource guys want to be able to program for ATI to make it great on the Linux platform. ATI however wants to guard its secrets from NVidia (And I'm sure likewise).

Anyway - Linux drivers can be downloaded to Gentoo via emerge or you can pick them up here via a browser - https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=300

Notice - those drivers are of 5/24/06 (2 days old as of this post!) - very recent. So to tell me that ATI doesn't have recent driver revs is a bit of a misnomer.

-S