Distro advice

[Moredhel]

Hi guys,

I'm after a Linux distro thats kind of flexible and has decent package management like Gentoo, but also supports the Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard out of the box. Gentoo itself won't support the marvell network device, and without that I cant get an updated kernel that does.

Ubuntu isn't really ideal as it does various things that annoy me somewhat, and it doesn't support the Jmicron device, which is what the motherboard uses for IDE, so the Live CDs wont work as I don't have a SATA optical drive. That's listed as a critical bug but as yet hasn't been fixed in the latest version of Feisty.

Any recommendations?

 

[28ten]

After a lot of messing I got a Marvell card semi-working
I prefer gentoo over ubuntu, but what I would really like is the best of both! as i spend too much time mucking about with gentoo!

 

[M0KUJ1N]

These issues arent Ubuntu specific unfortunately. The main reason is that most distros come with 2.6.17.x kernels out the box and Core2 doesn't get anywhere near proper kernel support until kernel 2.6.18. This is why a lot of people say not to go with bleeding edge hardware and Linux

However FC6 comes with a newish kernel out the box and I found a page where someone has patched his debian netboot image with new kernels with Core2 support http://mirror.home-dn.net//d-i/

Might be worth a try but seeing as I don't have access to a Linux box atm YMMV.

Heh GNOME is broken on that setup, so probably not much use!

 

[Una]

If you have another linux box you could build the kernel on there then copy it onto cd and then install on the machine you need it on. I guess you could just download the needed module code for your NIC, copy that onto cd/usb then build the module on your box. You could also create a custom installcd with your kernel on it, that however is the most work of them all.

I would go with 2nd option and just copy the driver tarball across, then build and install.

 

[daven1986]

not sure if it supports it but i found fedora core 6 to be a very nice distro and has served me well with good package support and forum support too.