Guidelines to select a new computer for linux use?

Wed Mar 16 23:57:05 UTC 2005

Victor Marquez wrote:

> Can somebody recommend me a site or document where I can learn about
> what are the best i386 processors for linux and/or for specific tasks?

I think all the x86 processors work well.

As for the rest...

My setup would probably be pretty cheap now:

*  AthlonXP 2800
*  Nforce2 motherboard w/ onboard sound, network
*  Two SATA hard drives in a RAID 0
*  Nvidia GeForce3 card
*  generic memory, 512 mb

When it comes to video cards and Linux, Nvidia's Linux driver support is
light years ahead of ATI I think.  All I hear about in the ATI forums is
how people are switching to Nvidia because they can't get their damn ATI
cards working in Linux.  Oh, I'm talking about 3D acceleration btw.  The
open source ATI driver is great for just 2D I think.

Also, since my board uses the Nforce2 chipset, I installed the proprietary
Nvidia drivers for it.  You don't have to, but it increased my sound
quality a ton.  It also supposedly increase the performance of the built in
networking...but I don't buy that...=)

If you want to go with a wireless card, check out linuxcompatible.org.  The
Netgear WG311v3 card seems to be reported as working under Linux.  I might
pick one up myself.

SATA worked right out of the box for me, but Linux doesn't support the half
hardware, half software RAID crap that most motherboards advertise as
"built in hardware SATA RAID".  Linux does a nice job at doing software
RAID though.  If you go that route, don't expect to be able to dual boot
though.

-- C