Hardware compatibility questions

[Stan Schultz]

One and All -

FIRST A LITTLE HISTORY: I've been working with, and troubleshooting PCs since about 1985. I'm reasonably computer literate with DOS 6.2, and Win 98 through Win 7. (How many of you even know what DOS means?) I'm 99.9% illiterate with Mac-speak. I've tried using Linux with something less than sterling success I-don't-know-how-many-times. Among the distros tried were Mandrake, Red Hat, and SUSE. I can partition the disk(s) and load them as dual boots with only a small level of stress and 99.9% success. But, other matters always nuked my complete conversion to Linux. One of the continuing nuisances is the issue of hardware compatibility. For instance, in my latest abortive attempt (about 5 years ago), I tried installing SUSE on a Gateway, than switched to Red Hat because I didn't like SUSE's interface. But, Red Hat wouldn't run on the Gateway.

When I queried a Red Hat forum about the problem someone very huffily pointed out that Red Hat didn't run on my model Gateway because of compatibility issues and if I'd had any modicum of intelligence I would have checked at [some long forgotten website] before bothering their exalted beneficences with my silly *** problem! I reinstalled Win Vista in the extra partition and forgot them and the whole issue.

So, now I'm retired and still frustrated with Windows' inadequacies, and would like to try my hand at Linux yet again. Especially since it has doubtlessly improved (i.e., "matured") a lot in the intervening time. (And yes, I admit I'm a bit bored.)

THE QUESTIONS:

1) Historically, Linux has always had trouble keeping up with current events. Almost every "new and improved" Linux distro has almost always worked well on a 2 year old machine, but the software was never able to handle the avant garde chip sets in state of the art video cards and Internet adapters, for instance. Is this still true?

2) I've lost track of where or how to locate listings of which distro is compatible or incompatible with which chips. Is there a central database for such information? If so, where? Or, do I need to research each flavor of Linux individually?

3) Specifically, I have a 2008 ACER Aspire 8920. Where might I find compatibility info about running Linux on this machine? No such thing? Or, how might I proceed from here?

(N.B. I did perform searches for "compatibility" and "hardware compatibility" and got nowhere.)

Thanks for all your help in advance.

[arochester]

"ACER Aspire 892"- http://www.linlap.com/acer_aspire_8920

[akbarali]

Can we use ACER Aspire for using Ubuntu kindly reply back.

[Stan Schultz]

"ACER Aspire 892"- ***

Many thanks.