>>Nah, that's just old distros for you.
>When I first put RH7.3 onto my first laptop, I needed to recompile the
kernel for my NIC and soundcard - it's just one of those PITA things.
Needless to say that when RH9 came along, everything was picked up. It
now sits with FC2 on (it's at the sister in laws) and has everything
working.
That's understandable - the hardware aged enough until the distro supported it more fully and easier. I make sure the software is much newer than the hardware - then I am ok. And it depends greatly on what you are trying to run. I keep seeing more and more fancy ads for laptops especially, and every time I think "what are the odds that I could actually get EVERY part of the system to work"? I have seen more posts to the effect of 'I can get everything but (fill in the blank) to work'. I know what you mean - the modern distros are MILES ahead of where they used to be! But then again there are always new features, chipsets, wireless features, etc. added. I would hope that they all have support right out of the box. But I don't have enough faith in HP to throw unbridled (and largely unearned) brand loyalty their way. That may change one day for me if enough company propaganda, I mean marketing, comes my way. Debian might be a differrent story - I hear that there is a greater range of hardware supported right out of the box. I have yet to test that theory at this point.
Marc
