[svlug] Fedora or Ubuntu for novis

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Don Marti (dmarti at zgp.org):

> As long as I've been using Linux (since 1994) there
> have been two kinds of people who have trouble-free
> desktop Linux machines: good hackers and good
> shoppers.  The hackers can write their own drivers.
> The shoppers can read mailing lists and web sites to
> find out what the hackers are using, and then order
> the right hardware.  The main skill is the fortitude
> and patience not to buy the "almost the same, it will
> probably work" hardware if the store is out of the
> known working hardware.

Right.  The "Maybe you'd be better off getting less problematic
hardware, rather than knocking yourself out getting probably cruddy
Linux driver support working" syndrome didn't _start_ with winmodems;
the online-discussion noise level just made it seem that way.

> There's always been something that's a problem.
> Anyone else remember when Diamond video cards were
> bad, and you were supposed to buy Matrox?

If memory serves, that was primarily because, even though Diamond
Multimedia were using perfectly OK graphics chips from S3, their video
cards suffered RAMDAC-du-jour syndrome -- probably on account of them
buying whatever was cheapest that week.