hardware support

Alot of people when faced with the choice of available distro's may freeze and simply stick to windows or their own distro simply because they don't know if it will support the hardware they are using so i was thinking why not build a database of members hardware so people browsing the site will know that they are covered?

I'm waiting until 5 is released and bedded before i reveal my hand but those of you on 2/3 could post your hardware

This is helpful to a degree but i was thinking more along the lines of a list of manufacturers sony,samsung et al and the users own model vaio/inspiron etc so people could easily see what desktop/laptop/netbook was already being used by members using this distro so they could jump right in and not have to worry about configuring anything

e.g I use a COMPAQ desktop SG3-320.

short and sweet but to those interested in dipping their toes in the pool it may be of interest

Marshfarm I completely agree that it would be a great idea - but it would be difficult to get spot on because of the sheer variety of computers out there. Models are always being updated and Zorin (like other distributions and operating systems) can be installed on computers that are 10 years old or more! For example, I have a Toshiba Satellite A200 (which I don't really use anymore...) and my own custom desktop (my main pc). There are about 10 different versions of the A200 - and that's a fairly limited range model.

So as I said, it's a great idea and I too would love to see it, but in terms of feasability - sadly not.

Here's my 2 cents:
I have a Creative SB Live! series sound card that is incompatible with linux, as most sound blaster cards seem to be. I've spent a couple of days trying to figure out how to get around buying one that is compatible (probably for $100 or more). So... I bought these headphones for my kids at Christmas that have connections for XBox360, PS3 and PC, it so happens that the PC connection is through a usb. Guess what? It works!! What I can conclude here is that I can use a usb dongle sound card, easily found on ebay for under $20 or at your local best buy or walmart for about $25. Turtle Beach Audio Advantage looks to be the one online that others seem to have had success with in earlier linux releases.

If, in these brainstorming posts, we were to share our issues with incompatible hardware instead of listing, undoubtedly, an inordinately large list of compatible hardware it is my opinion many more users would benefit from the ease at finding similar issues with incompatibles.
Or the posts could be filled with hardware that users can purchase to build a completely compatible system from the ground up... but, wait... isn't Zorin already doing that???

Sorry, incorrect in your statement about Creative SB incompatibly. I personally use the card in Mint Katya.

However...Mint main edition will continue to be "ubuntu based" even though most of the other editions (including kde) are switching to the rolling release debian testing mode...Clem works on the ubuntu based version after it is released each time...and in between those periods (after the new Mint is released) he works on the debian version...