Hi All,
The time has come to upgrade my home system. I have a college age nephew who builds Windows systems. He can always use the extra bucks, so I'll let him get the new MB, processor, & ram.
Currently my system has a SoundBlaster Live card, a Matrox duel head graphics card, plus a SCSI card for the HP ScanJet. I'd prefer to stick with AMD processors.
I currently run SUSE 9.0. My wife seems to think I run "that stupid Linux" just to tee her off. Therefore I've wondered about switching to Linspire or Xandros because they are intended to make Windows refugees feel comfortable. (Don't say duel boot. She can't be bothered to log on to a separate Linux account.)
So here's what I want input on. Are there any brands for the hardware that I should tell my nephew NOT to consider? What are your practical opinions on the distro?
Any help appreciated,
Bob Kennedy
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On Monday 18 April 2005 21:34, Robert Kennedy wrote:
So here's what I want input on. Are there any brands for the hardware that I should tell my nephew NOT to consider? What are your practical opinions on the distro?
Only NVIDIA graphics cards. SCSI is generally well-supported but you really want to move to USB for scanners as soon as you can. SB Live! is the best sound card out there, still. Prefer SATA if you can. Stay away from using integrated nForce network adaptors. All USB keyboards and mice will work. 192 mb of RAM for a decent GUI experience. 256 for comfortable. 512 for nice. 1024+ for blazing. Prefer cheap laser over a cheap inkjet.
Ubuntu for desktop distro. "Debian testing" (from experimental installer) for serious work or server distro.
On Monday 18 April 2005 22:26, Jason Clinton wrote:
On Monday 18 April 2005 21:34, Robert Kennedy wrote:
So here's what I want input on. Are there any brands for the hardware that I should tell my nephew NOT to consider? What are your practical opinions on the distro?
Well, I've been a scrounger for most of my system, I'm running an old AMD K6-2 @500 MHz/ASUS socket 7 mobo. Started with 64 megs of memory; when I went to 128 it helped appreciably. More memory, the better --- and it helps cut down on the swap space useage.
I have an AGP video card with only 8 megs memory, which is pretty good for most of my stuff. Now if I want to do some very heavy graphics, then I'd go for the bigger fancier video cards. I just won't pay more for the video card than I paid for the mobo/processor, if you know what I mean!!!
SCSI is better than IDE but you pay for it. I use Adaptec AHA2940 cards, as they seem to be a standard in Linux. The caveat is adapting from one series of connectors to another (the adapters are EXPENSIVE). IDE now has the price advantage, but you're limited to 2 devices per IDE channel, and usually only two channels on the mobo. With wide SCSI you can have up to 15 devices, and that also includes SCSI scanners, CD-ROM drives, tape streamers, and my peccadillo -- the old Syquest removable media drives.
I do aagree that AMD gives more bang for the buck than Intel.
My fav distro so far has been SuSE, as I once had very little problems doing installs on the 6.4 and 7.2 versions. 9.1 was another story, although I finally got things figured out earlier today. I found out from their help desk that since I bought my disks a year ago, the support window has expired, and I would have to BUY time with Novell for support. Not very happy with that at all. That's the caveat emptor about them.
One hard rule I live by is: Don't upgrade unless you need the features it will give you. Each of the older distros had features I wish was still on the newest. But you know how they LOVE to CHANGE THINGS.
Aa with all things computer, your mileage may vary.
Gary Hildebrand St. Joseph, MO
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Gary Hildebrand -
Jason Clinton -
Robert Kennedy