I don't know much about other distros. I use Gentoo, which is extremely unfriendly to install, though if it is installed, it is very easy to maintain. I suppose suse is not the only disto, which will give you problems with multi media stuff. Too dangerous patent and copyright minefield for large companies. Perhaps you could try Knoppix? I hear much good about Ubuntu. But no idea if it is usable for you.

there's no such a thing as a newb friendly distro

if problem is mplayer you can try to compile it from sources:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html
if you decide this way, i can write you down the essential steps to do so, if the docs look overwhelming

for a description of major distros you can look here:
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

i'm with wargand and consider gentoo the perfect distro (but we gentoo-ists are looked as fanatics even among the other linux users ).
it can be difficult to install it (btw docs are well written) but after that it all goes down-hill.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

That means the opposite to what i think you wanted to say surely?

something got lost in translation or more probably i picked up the wrong term (as in "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")

by "difficult" i mean you dont have any eye-candy graphical user interface assisting you during the install. everything is done from a text only console.
as someone from fh quoted:


good news is that the docs are well written, as they assist you step-by-step on which commands you have to type, etc.

once you have a working gentoo machine, it's very easy to keep it up-to-date as wargand pointed out and dependencies between packages are not a problem anymore, because you are actually compiling from sources everything (no nore "binary package x compiled against version y of library z").
so from now on it's all "down-hill" as in "easily walking down a hill" as opposed to "laboriously walking up a hill" (can you say that in english?)


@Geezus: nice one

yeah but when something goes down hill it means things have gone to shit.
"Everything was down hill from there" -> Nothing was as good past that point. Obviously from a mountaineering angle

Anyway, I'm going to grab gentoo and give it a whirl, it has ntfs support and amd64 compiled versions as far as i'm aware so its a good a place to start from. I was going to previously, but i had 1.5TB of NTFS on my old pc and there was ropey support so i wasn't going to risk it.

Is there a hdd manager option, or do i have to use partition magic to set aside ~15GB EX3. I want it to be dual boot with windows as the main one, I notice the grub commands are there, which is far as i'm aware is a boot manager right?

thanks for the explanation!

for partitioning i usually use fdisk which does not preserve data, i.e. destroys it.
i know there is a partition manager that can resize partitions whithout destroying data:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/gnuparted/
but i've never tried it. i dont know if it's included in the gentoo live-cd. just check if it's there after having booted from the live-cd, issuing the command:


grub is indeed a boot manager, more flexible than lilo (which was the previous mostly used boot loader).
you configure your partition layout in a config file (usually /boot/grub/grub.conf) then install grub in the MBR (/dev/hda).
for example you can set the win partition as default and a timeout of e.g. 5 seconds for the user to choose an alternate partition to boot in.
this way when you'll power-on the pc you'll be faced with a list of partitions to boot in (moving up and down with arrows and press enter). if no key is pressed after 5 secs it boots windows.
so, the times you want to boot windows you can swith-on the pc, walk away while it boots and come back with windows ready.


one more thing: the base concept of gentoo is that it compiles from sources, this meaning that when you install or update a package it has to download the sources and compile them. this may take time if you're installing big packages like xorg or gnome or kde. during this time you may want to watch a movie or tv episode on your standalone instead of watching the output of the compiler scrolling on your monitor for an hour or so

erm am i right in thinking its a tad harder to setup SATA RAID? its got grub installed, unfrotunately I don't think i can get at the drives without using a different distro/drivers for sata2.0 raid... oh well

if only i had the time to read one of these megaguides

OK, i've made some progress

Mplayer is installed and working perfectly.
I've managed to install the ATI drivers, BUT I can't seem to enable 3d Acceleration and there is no listing for the 9800pro, so it's currently installed as a 9700 is that ok? and how do I enable 3d?

I had this bookmarked for when i had an ati and was planning on installing nix:
http://www.rage3d.com/content/articles/atilinuxhowto/

I don't know if its any help but it goes through a lot of the problems, like 3d acceleration work arounds.

Hard luck on the ATI with nix old chap

Still not having much luck

I'll try again later

Well, looks like it's time to uninstall linux

Blame ATI, their drivers are fucking awful for linux, I'll wait and re-install when I upgrade (and I won't be getting ATI)

lol, thats the second abort

Linux is never, ever, ever going to integrate into the home market until they sort the installation out. Drivers wise its a shambles, but that's not entirely the distros fault. Poor installation methods is though.

No wonder m$ owns the market. lSeems if you want to use linux these days you have to use a 3 year old pc just to ensure you've got adequet driver support I've had a nightmare trying to find drivers for newer pcs.

sorry guys, i'd helped but i know nothing about 3d acceleration or sata raid

i guess we're not ready yet to world domination

lol, its okay clancy, in five years time i'm sure the hardware will be supported natively... doubtful i'll be able to get drivers for my Brainbackup drive or 4d video controller though

Ahh sorry, cannot help at the moment. Just moved house and have no internet yet. Don't wonder that I can post here without internet. I am in my company shocking everyone why I am here on my holyday.



Btw. no idea about SATA RAIDS, but I managed to get 3d accelleration activated on an ATI card.

Well, I still haven't uninstalled, I'll wait for your expert guidance

Not before the 12th. Before I won't have regular internet.

Yeah i looked around and no one seems to know, they all say its a software issue since raid is implemented through software functionality so I'll just have to find the drivers or a distro that supports it.

That's fine, I appreciate the help