Questions regarding hardware for a Free Software (especially Debian)
Hi, All.
I would like to purchase a new system to replace my current Desktop.
Unfortunately, it seems that getting some new hardware is not as easy, due to a
multitude of unavailable drivers for Free Operating systems or differences
regarding the role of the systems.
It seems that most sites where hardware is discussed (say, slashdot,
tomshardware, arstechnica and similars) as well as vendor sites (e.g., Asus, MSI
etc) seem to aim at the "Gamer" person.
I was reading some reviews and I am confused regarding getting a new Desktop and
I would sincerely appreciate some help.
I did a bit of homework, and some of my choices seem to be hard to satisfy, but
they seem to be quite mundane (at least, I would be lead to think so):
* I would like to have a moderately powerful CPU (regardless of manufacturer).
Perhaps a 4-core to use as a build constantly programs (I am a Maintainer of
some packages in Debian and I would like to take action on some big packages and
do some QA work).
* Besides the CPU, I would like to have a reasonable amount of memory (perhaps
8GB of memory). Again, no preferred brands here.
* I have no need for dual graphics cards or anything fancy. I video necessities
are, at most, playing a video and nothing much. I use fluxbox as my Window
Manager and I don't see me changing it in the future.
What all this means is that I am more inclined to take money from a fast
graphics card and put it in a CPU (I saw that some video cards are *really*
expensive!).
* I prefer to assemble the system myself (since this is the cheaper route), but
as the last system that I built was in 1999, I'm not that up-to-date with the
newer technologies. I have no fear of learning things, though.
* And, finally, but very important, something that is fully supported by Free
Software only. I want to get a system where I can run Debian with Linux as a
kernel and, it would be fantastically nice if it could, work acceptably with
Debian with the FreeBSD kernel.
As I stated above, I have no predilection for manufacturer and I may go with
Intel or AMD. Some of the options that are available at the manufacturer's sites
don't seem to target users like myself:
Asus P7P55D-E Premium, Maximus III Formula, Maximus III GENE, MSI 790GX-G65 etc,
etc.
Is there anybody that could shed some light with recommendations?
Thank you very much, Rogério Brito.
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
http://rb.doesntexist.org : Packages for LaTeX : algorithms.berlios.de
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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