Its been a while since I've posted down here in T&T, so far all my electronics have been going fairly well and college has kept me rather busy. On the college front I have entered into my programming classes, so far just C programming. I know that is rather simpleton to some of you, but I have to start somewhere. We are using a lot of linux for it and I know that it is easy enough and doable to program in Windows, but I feel like this is the time to learn how to use linux productively (meaning not just to play Kbounce and use random network tools to try sneaky things). I also know dual booting is an easy and doable option, but it can also be a pain in the ass as I have found out. I have had a few spare parts laying around and have always wanted to build a Shuttle PC. I don't know if I will be able to do it, money being the restriction. So I am posting to ask if the parts I have selected, mainly the Shuttle barebone, is easy to get drivers installed in linux and what distribution of linux is best to go with. So far I have selected:
Shuttle SG31G2
That has integrated video, Intel GMA 3100 and that is my main concern for drivers in linux. I know that Intel is very supportive of linux, but graphics cards have been where I have run into issues in the past. Also I don't know if any special SATA drivers will be needed, or any necessary, or performance enhancing, motherboard drivers.
I going to use a spare DVD drive, SATA HDD and maybe a spare floppy drive.
As for the distro of linux, I have used Fedora in the past, and that is what we use in the labs (there is a corporate headquaters beside my campus), but previous versions of Fedora have given me the most problems with updating and getting proper graphics drivers.
I have used Knoppix 5 and have been impressed by it.
Basically I am looking for minimal frustration to have a complete working installation.
Thanks guys.
[size=92][color=#0000FF]Hugh Hefner for President[/color][/size]
The Graphic's shouldn't give you that much of an issue TBH. SATA drivers, No... if the Distro wont detect the drive on the first crack ( i think it should be able to ) Then go into the bios and turn the SATA controller in to a IDE controller ( emulation ) and from them on it will be able to do it..
don't look up Word for word what I've just said, But check out the manual for the bare bone kit and you'll see what i'm talking about, its usually called something like "operating mode" or something to that effect.
i think you'll do fine with the hardware that you've selected, it will be a decent little box to muck around on.
But at the end of the day, if The Whole dual booting thing didn't Jive with you that well, Try running Linux in a Virtual machine within windows, then you can have your windows O/S and be able to go on Linux when you need to and do your work.
I'm not sure if this post would help you or not, but then again, i'm not sure what you're asking...
Really not hard enabling the codecs directly from the vanilla Ubuntu, just enable the Universe repos. I have the same Intel GPU in my laptop and it works fine with Ubuntu out of the box (though my laptop does a few other funny things). On all the computers I've installed the latest version of Ubuntu on, pretty much everything works out of the box, just enable some restricted drivers (for nVidia or ATI cards, etc.) and you should be all set.