> I purchased an AMD-Duron based motherboard with built-in LAN, soundcard and
> oddball little modem (Unimodem?) that came with. When I installed Suse Linux
> 6.4 on it, none of these were recognized, 
	I'd suggest getting a more recent distro than SuSE 6.4. it's
positively ancient. (over a year old, I think).
	my advice would be to try RedHat 7.2; or Debian. Some will advise
Mandrake 8.1 or something similar. 
	here's my take on the tradeoffs:
		RedHat/Mandrake -- easy to install, easy to use.
		Debian -- easy to update and find/install new software.
	RedHat/Mandrake are good distros for first-time users; they do a lot
of hand-holding stuff. (downright insipidly so in the case of Mandrake).
Once you learn how linux works, tho; Debian's package
management/installation tools (apt -- Advanced Package Tool) makes it the
easiest distribution (of any OS!) to install/update software for. 
	(of course, many will disagree with this). 
		
Carl Soderstrom
-- 
Network Engineer
Real-Time Enterprises
(952) 943-8700