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I'm going to do a rebuild of my computer soon, and I've got Debian 3.0r1 that I want to try again. How good is debian at detecting hardware?
Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Asus A7V8X-X w/ built in sound and LAN
GeForce FX 5600XT video card
would Debian detect these devices?
There are netinstalls with newer kernels than the 2.4.18 that 3.0 comes with. Check up on debianplanet.org
well I'm on dial-up and netinstalls aren't really an option...
then if you have a device that is not supported in 2.4.18 and you are using the debian install CDs, it will not work unless you install and then upgrade to a newer kernel.
so then I should probably stick with Mandy until I get broadband?
I know that your videocard won't be detected automaticly. You will have to download the drivers from nvidia homepage, and install them.
well actually, I'm more concerned about it detecting the onboard audio and LAN that anything else....
Isn't the main reason why people use debian is to use apt-get? If you have a dial-up connection, why would you choose debian over some other distro?
My advice is... if you already have Debian 3.0r1 on CDs, then just suck it and see (after backing up your valuable data, of course :) ).
My guess is that the onboard LAN and sound cards will be off-the-shelf chips with well-known drivers.
Another particularly good way of checking would be a quick boot-up using Knoppix. The hardware detection is so good, that if it doesn't detect your LAN interface and sound card first time, I would think twice about trying to install Debian proper (Knoppix being Debian-based, just in case you didn't know). If the detection fails, Knoppix won't have touched your hard-drive and you can go back to Mandrake.
If Knoppix *can* detect your LAN and sound card, then it will tell you during boot-up which kernel driver modules it uses, for future reference when installing Debian.
Is that any help?
actually, I hadn't thought of using the Knoppix CD to try it out.... That does help. I'll try it and let you know....