How hard is it to find drivers? I have an old eMachine that I’d like to convert to Linux but I’ve never done it before.
An old eMachine is likely to work fine with no additional drivers needed.
Suse has good hardware detection and very user friendly installation interface.
>How hard is it to find drivers? I have an old eMachine that I’d like to convert to Linux but I’ve never done it before.
If you want to try Linux, download one of the Ubuntu “Live CD” iso files, burn it to a CD and then pop it in your machine.
You will be up and running in Ubuntu Linux without touching anything on your current system. This is a really nice way to check out whether your drivers and hardware are supported without making the full commitment. If you like it, there should be an icon on the Ubuntu desktop that lets you do the full or dual-boot install.
Linux actually supports more hardware than does Windows, although this might have changed with Windows 7.
Perhaps the best way to determine if your computer can support Linux is to get a Live CD of your preferred Linux distribution, and run it before you attempt an installation. True, it will run slower, but at least you'll get an idea how the system would run, and what difficulties if any you may run into.