[NTLUG:Discuss] Hardware for Linux

[Al Wyatt]

Greetings all.

I'm about (within the next week) to purchase a new PC
that I plan to dual-boot Linux and that M$ o.s. on. 
My questions are as follows:

1. Which local PC sellers have good reputations?  Are
any of them knowledgable about Linux and
compatibility?

2. Are any of the national (Dell/Micron/Gateway) PC
sellers good options for Linux?

3. I can see that most all of the popular video cards
(like 3dfx and Nvidia) are well supported, but what
about audio cards?  SoundBlaster's site seems to
suggest their cards don't work well under Linux, and
they're the most popular kind of sound card out there.

4. Partitioning the hard disk: IIRC, suse's distro has
software for re-partitioning an existing HD without
losing data (this would be helpful if I buy a PC with
the M$ o.s. already on it).  Do other distros have
such a utility?  Should I just buy something like
Partition Magic if I really want to do this?

I know these are lots of questions and I apologize if
I shouldn't be asking them here.  Just hoping to find
some helpful Linux neighbors out there.
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