wishing to use linux

hello everyone! well i really am interested in using Linux
infact i while back i tried RedHat 7.3 , but to no avail i couldnt get online and it was about as worthless to me as used TP, so i i went back and made a dual boot 98/XP.

i have 2 HDD both 20 gig..the main has 98/XP dual booted with system commander(because i bonked the xp dual boot ) and the 2nd HDD has about 10gigs left.

i have a Linksys wireless lan card and i have no idea how to get it to work under linux, same thing with my audigy, i have two video cards and i dont belive linux can do dual display. it weird because i d/l a gentoo distro this week with the UT2003 demo and the sound worked fine!, just no lan. so if any body could help me decide what would be the best Distro for me and possibly help me get along with the lan and sound issues. most aprreciated.

Might want to check the sites for the distros. Most sites have a list of hardware tested to work with that particular distro. Although for the most part it shouldn't make that much of a difference, the driver interfaces with the kernel, which doesn't change from distro to distro, although the drivers might.

Might wanna check around for drivers, or do a google search.

You should try Mandrake or Lycoris (the so called Linux XP)
http://www.lycoris.com/
http://www.mandrakelinux.com

they are both quite easy to use, look at the hardware compatibility list to make sure you won't have any problems. btw, the audigy will work on linux.

thanx guys, im getting the new Mandrake as i type
i looked around and found various sources for linux wireless lan, but there are so many different drivers.
with windblows the software self installs then you choose what channel your on and so forth...is it the same for linux?


:note: mandrake autodetected it, im just having trouble getting it to get on the net, all the frequencies and ids.

lycoris is pretty cool, but i don't think it uses kde3. it's a offshoot of caldera openlinux which uses kde2. lycoris felt really laggy on my tbird 900 w/ 512 ram which is pretty fast.

on the flipside, winxp uses can use lycoris without a hitch, that's mainly the strongpoint.

hmm..Mandrake seems to be going pretty well. I got it on the net and all is well, so im quite happy .....buh bye M$

Mandrake 9 was a big step forward, right off the box my scanner worked perfectly, my adsl connection worked, i could access my other computers through samba with no tweaking and graphics card instantly detected.
There were a few problems though especially Gnome which really sucked - both slow and unstable. KDE 3 is far better imo, openoffice is too damn slow on any GUI and my soundcard would not work. So i'm back with Windows xp

I personally found SuSE to be a great deal better than Mandrake which just appeared cluttered to me