I am building a new desktop machine for home use (no gaming, but we
will output DVD and MPEG movies to the TV). I would appreciate the
Debian community's opinion regarding my hardware selection, as this is
the first non-MS machine that I am building. I have tried to select
components known to work with either Debian or Linux in general, these
are the components:
Athlon 64 5200+
http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=39
Asus M3A board
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1934&l1=3&l2=149&l3=592&l4=0
(we need both IDE and SATA, as my current 500GB hard drives are IDE)
2 GB Kingston Value memory
One of these video cards:
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1720&l1=2&l2=6&l3=551&l4=0
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=2&l2=8&l3=634&l4=0&model=2051&modelmenu=1
I am leaning towards the second card because of the quiet fanless
design, but I am a bit concerned about a fanless card. It also
mentions OpenGL 2.0 compliance, which sounds good.
Optiarc AD-7200S DVD±RW sata DVD burner
http://www.sonynec-optiarc.eu/en/exhibits/half-height-drives/ad-7200s
This machine will likely flip flop between Debian and Fedora about
once per year, with the occasional test drive of a different distro,
if my past experience is an indicator. I am on a budget, so I tried to
cut corners but not too many. Any advice and suggestions regarding the
hardware mentioned are much appreciated. Thanks.