Help finding a Distro

[cjr2k3]

Need help finding a Distro... but I have some tricky requirements.

Need something that wont take a whole lot of trouble to set up and use (my GF uses this PC too). But I need something that is bleeding edge in terms of Development software (Eclipse, GCC, etc...). And (that's the tricky part) ATI Catalist MUST work (ATI HD4850) because I do play some games.

Between KDE and Gnome I prefer KDE but I use gnome too, so no problem here. As a package manager I'm very used to Debian APT. But as gnome vs KDE I can learn to use another package manager.

Any suggestions?

PS: Been using Ubuntu lately

[Kano]

Why is eclipse critical? You can easly run that from your home.

[cjr2k3]

I kinda like keep things integrated. I'm doing it now so i can use some extensions. The problem is ubuntu doesnt update some stuff before a mew distro is released.

[Kano]

Until you use a rolling release that is the normal case. Rolling releases are nice for some people, but it creates much more support effort than normal ones. When you closed some bugs new ones are found.

[L33F3R]

ATI Catalist MUST work (ATI HD4850) because I do play some games.

Hold up your gaming on an ati card under linux. sound the alarm.

[Jaguar07]

Fedora may fit your criterion.

Fedora 11 has some support for ATi cards built in.

As far as updates, it has more available than Ubuntu between releases.

There are several great hardware configuration articles for Nvidia and ATi drivers on the Fedora Forums site. Particularly this one for ATi cards:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...3&page=1&pp=10

[cjr2k3]

ATI working quite good for a while in Linux (at least for me Radeon 9600, X1400 and a HD4850 now).

Catalist runs on latest fedora?

[SoftVision]

Try Arch Linux

Arch Linux has a rolling release system and fits your bleeding edge requirements. Read more about them on their website and wiki. You'll get the latest GCC and Eclipse as and when they release. With a little work you should be able to get your graphics set up as well.

[chithanh]

Arch Linux with their rolling releases would have been a good choice if they had not purged the proprietary fglrx/Catalyst driver from their official repositories. Now it is just a second-class citizen.

Gentoo also has rolling releases, but it is not trivial (although straightforward) to install. And Gentoo makes it easy to mix stable and bleeding-edge packages.

From the comments I gather, it appears that AMD developers only care about three distros, namely RHEL, SLED and Ubuntu (which you already use). So if 3D is a priority, you may want to stick to one of those distros.

[AdrenalineJunky]

niether arch or gentoo are particularly easy to set up.

i'd recomend chakra - ready to go arch linux with KDE-Mod and graphical installer.

http://chakra-project.org/

you can install patched catalyst drivers that work with the newest kernels from one of several third party repositories (like arch-stuff) or from the AUR