unfortunatly there is no one central hardware compatibility database.

but in general most compnents work our of the box so its easier to install and then start fixing later.

as to which flavor and version to use I recommend you start with Mandrake, its by far the easiest and most user friendly.

later on you can make your own decision (I stayed with mandrake but many choose to move to other stuff).

latest version of Mandrake is 10.1

if you're very waorried about hardware support you can download a livecd distro (knoppix is generally the best) and test with it, livecds do not touch your harddisk.

if the livecd works then anything else can be configured to work, if the livecd doesn't then you got a bit of learning to do.

cheers, Alaa

http://www.manalaa.net "i`m feeling for the 2nd time like alice in wonderland reading el wafd"