Linux Computer

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 09:00:04PM -0400, Randy Jonasz wrote:
> I hope the long weekend is treating you well. In lieu of doing my own
> research or as part of that research, I thought I would toss out a
> general question.  I'm putting together a desktop computer for my
> parents.  They need to run linux and they want to spend around $1200.
> What sort of hardware can I get that will be fully compatible with
> mandriva?  They use the computer mainly as a window onto the internet
> and email, but from time to time,  they also edit and print digital
> photos as well with the gimp.
> 
> I'd like to go with a dual core amd athlon 64 with 2GB of ram and
> maybe a western digital sata hard drive.  I'm not sure what video card
> to get, but I'd like one with dvi out and nvidia chipset.  Don't need
> to worry about ethernet card as we have an old dlink which works well.
> Sound card is not all that important; they're used to a sb live.
> They also want a flatscreen lcd monitor, but this does not need to be
> included in the $1200, although if it could be, that would be great.
> 
> Any and all advice is welcome!

Well I have no clue what mandriva supports (I have never liked anything
about mandrake/mandriva).

I do know that in my experience I have had good luck with nvidia
chipsets, usually via chipsets, and intel chipsets.  I highly recommend
avoiding ati chipsets and sis.

Ethernet is almost always onboard now so not really much of an issue,
except a few companies put very strange network chips onboard with
terrible support.

The most recent machine I built just before xmas for my sister, which I
did not run linux on, but am quite sure would work, had this:

Asus P5B
Core 2 Duo E6400
2x512MB OCZ DDR2 PC6400 ram
XFX nvidia 7600GT
2xWD1600JS 160GB HDs (running raid1).
SilverStone TJ04B-W case
SilverStone 400W power supply
Pioneer DVR-111 PATA dvd writer

I think that ended up at around $1200 or so.

Since it has an intel chipset ethernet and sata and all that should
pretty much just work with any distribution with a recent 2.6 kernel,
and of course the video will work with the nvidia drivers for sure.  The
7600GT supports a single link and a dual link DVI, so it can run
anything you want to connect to it.  If I was building myself a new
system I would make it quite similar to that one, although I would be
tempted by an nvidia 680i based board that could run SLI, although I
likely would never use that feature.  The nvidia chipsets have
occationally had a few issues with linux, but they are usually worked
out pretty quickly.

I like athlon 64s, but the intel chipset simple has better support, and
the core 2 duo is a better cpu design, so that's what I consider correct
to buy at this time.  For an athlon 64 I would look for an nvidia 570 or
590 based board, since the current via chipsets still seem to have some
bugs to get worked out in the linux kernel.

--
Len Sorensen
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