Chosing cheap desktop: recommendation?

[Tyler Aviss]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 12:30 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> | From: S P Arif Sahari Wibowo <arifsaha-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>
> | I would like to find a cheap desktop for playing with Fedora 9 and Centos 5.
>
> Really cheap: buy off lease.  See my message to the list of about 24 hours
> ago.  Not perfect!
>
> Alternative: follow freecycle or craigslist for a cheap or free
> discard.  Problem: you probably should consider 1G a minimum although
> 512M will certainly work.  The only cheap RAM these days is DDR2 so
> that eliminates many older boxes.  This approach is perhaps too
> demanding of time.
>
> |  - Serenity T1150, AMD Sempron LE-1150 2GHz, nVidia nForce 630a / GeForce 7050
> | chipset.
> |  - Serenity T1100, AMD Athlon 64 3200+, apparently some Via chipset (S3
> | UniChrome Graphics).
> |  - Shuttle K45PC, Intel Celeron Dual-Core E1200, Intel 945GC / ICH7 chipset.
> |  - Serenity T1080, Intel Celeron Dual-Core E1200. Intel 945GC / ICH7 Chipset.
> |
> | (from
> | http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=cpl&id=170.45&sort=3)
> |
> | Any suggestion?
>
> I would avoid anything named UniChrome.  Historically there were no
> decent open source drivers.  I don't know if that has changed.

If you're looking for something that will handle basic 3d and TV-out
functions they're not bad. I've played with various VIA boards
(usually mini-ITX stuff) that had Unichrome chipset. The in-kernel
support has gotten better over the last few years too, so there's not
so much download+configure+make+make install'ing going on :-)

>
> The K45PC is nice and small but has no optical drive and no apparent
> way to add one internally.
>
> The T1150 and T1080 seem fine, for all I know.
>
> The Semperon LE-1150 appears to be single core.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Sempron_microprocessors
>
> The Celeron E1200 appears to be dual core.
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microprocessors
>
> So the processors seem close enough to not matter much.  Dual core is
> a bonus.
>
> The T1080 has a larger disk.
>
> So: the T1080 is better but the T1080 is less expensive.  Your call.
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>



--
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists