Hi,

I'm looking for best distro with both best KDE 4.7 , fglrx and broadcom rivers support.

I personally prefer openSUSE, however within last year it managed to get broken at least 3 times with either standBy/Hybernate > resume - X simply disappears after resume (looks like fglrx issue). Either power management (radeon) is non existent - like 40–50% battery time decrease with ~ +15oC temp increase. Both are ugly and non acceptable :/

The laptop (DELL) is going to be used be total beginers and I'm not going to have much time on supporting it


P.S I'd like to test drive Gnome3, an it can't be done with virtualBox :/ So my question, how big mess would it be to have both KDE 4.7 and Gnome 3 at the same time (like NM-8 nad NM-9 conflicts). What distro would handle it best?

Cheers,

Lukas

Depending on the packaging, KDE 4 should be able to co-exist fine. GNOME should be able to as well in theory.

Which openSUSE are you using? The problems with Broadcom/Flgrx/Suspend sound more related to the kernel drivers, so try distributions with newer or older kernels than that shipped by openSUSE. Newer versions of openSUSE will also have a newer kernel.

I have been using opensuse at work and home and I find it to be the best combination of the following -

1) good KDE support, including updates in stable repository.
2) good mix of stability and new packages.
3) compatibility with RPM/RH packages.
4) maturity and support.

I have not had any problems with ACPI on the laptops I have - toshiba M305D and HP dv6-3210. suspend/resume work. ATI catalyst drivers always work, work better than OSS drivers and do better PM. While the OSS drivers are now stable, fglrx has been stable for years.

In the past, the cause of instability has always been issues with DRM in kernel, XORG and so on. It is important, if using newer kernels and fglrx, to turn mode setting off during boot. FGLRX is rock solid for me and has been for YEARS; do not believe the **** posted by zealots everywhere.