Re: buy or build computer?
On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 01:55:32PM -0500, Peter Christensen wrote:
> My five-year-old Gateway Pentium 200 MHz died recently. (It won't
> boot from the hard drive or a rescue disk, and it won't go into
> bios-setup mode.) I don't think it's fixable, and anyway, it was so
> slow that it's probably time to replace it. Temporarily I'm using a
> borrowed computer with Win95. Yuck!
>
> For my next computer I want to make sure that everything is compatible
> with Linux. I searched this list and found a few posts about buying
> computers.
In my experience, most main stream hardware is fairly well supported by
Linux. Provided you stay away from the absolute latest and greatest
whiz-bang hardware that was released last week (unless of course the
manufacturer provides Linux drivers). I've also had quite a bit of
success with buying barebones systems from resellers. I used to build
all my systems myself, and I really don't mind doing so. However, with
todays prices, there's little need for doing so. A little searching
will usually reveal a reasonably priced reseller that will ship you an
assembled custom system.
You might check out the following (in no particular order):
http://pricewatch.com
http://cyberpowerpc.com
http://excaliberpc.com
> A few people recommended the AMD Athlon processor over Pentiums.
I've found that the AMD processors are normally much less expensive and
provide a similar performance. Personally, I like them and use them in
almost all of my systems. I'm sure you'll find people that swear by
Intel and people that swear by AMD. In the end it's up to you.
> And Matrox for video
Most main stream video chipsets are well supported.
> Soundblaster or Ensoniq for sound
With ALSA, I've had little trouble getting any audio chip to work.
--
Jamin W. Collins
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