Looking for some Linux advice

[praematurus]

I'm about to install SuSe 7.1 and I could use some advice.

Here's my system:

P3-700 @ 933 MHz
512 Mb RAM
Radeon 64 DDR Vivo
SB Live! Value (OEM)
Dlink 530TX NIC
Com21 Docsys (sp?) cable modem

My hard drives are currently config'd/formatted like this (by Patition Magic v 6):

Disk 1 (20 G Maxtor), partition sizes approximate
Partition 1 FAT32 (Win Me) ~10 G
Partition 2 FAT32 (Files) ~5 G
Partition 3 ext2 ~4 G
Partition 4 linux swap ~120 M

Disk 2 (13 G IBM)
Partiion 1 not formatted ~2 M
Partition 2 NFTS (Win2k) ~13 G

Disk 3 (3.2 G Quantum)
Partition 1 FAT32 (Downloads) ~3.2 G

I think I'm ready to drop Linux in. (I realize the hubris of that statement.) Is there anything I should pay particular attention to? Advice on setting up the Radeon?, SB live?, NIC? I'm a major Linux newbie (read some stuff on the web, but this is my first try), so any advice would be welcome. Also, what router would you recommend for Linux compatibility?

 

[MGMorden]

Use reiserfs instead of ext2. It's journaling and will offer better reliability. The Sblive! should be autodetected (I'm guessing, I've never tried Suse). If not then a simple modprobe emu10k1 will load the driver. Adding that to the init scripts will load it everytime (you probably don't know what init scripts are yet, but we'll only jump into that if the driver isn't loaded ). As for the Radeon, there are drivers for Xfree86 4.0.2 and up. Not sure if Suse comes with that. If not then you'll have to update it manually (or with RPM's). After you get it installed you just modify your /etc/X11/XF86Config to use the radeon. If you don't want to do that I've got a program here that can make the modifications for you. I'm not sure what chipset the NIC uses, but it will almost surely be autodetected (i've never had a nic that wasn't detected in any distro), so I doubt you'll even have to worry about that. As for the router I have no idea as I don't use one .

 

[praematurus]

Thanks for the help. I have read that YAST is pretty good at autodetection. (*trying not to convince myself that it's not PnP* )

reiserfs? I've not heard of that. What is it? another filesystem? How do I go about doing that? (PM6 doesn't do it.)

Thanks again.

 

[MGMorden]

Reiserfs is another filesystem. Suse was actually the first major distro to offer it right from the install. I know mandrake can install to it by default as well. I've gotten slackware running with it but that required a bit of extra work. You *should* be able to create an ext2 partition from pm6 and then just change it to reiserfs when you're setting stuff up in suse. As I've said though I have no idea how suse works so I could well be wrong.