Linux Hardware (in general)
armhead
and intend to buy enough more to build a PC for this purpose.
I enjoyed OS2 very much back before it took the big dive into
the bit bucket. Linux should be just as much fun and just as
useful as that was - and appears to be here for good. I am
quite excited over this.
However, I start out not knowing many of the basic facts.
I have a real nice case and power supply, and a questionable
mother board. HD ATA 100 or less - no SATA. Would I be
able to use SATA with Linux anyway? Video AGP - no PCI
express. Would I be able to use PCI express with Linux
anyway? I would buy a gig of RAM, but if Linux is less of
a hog than XP that might be pointless overkill.
I have on hand a used NVIDIA 5200 AGP video card. I am
guessing that this would be reasonable enough. If I want to
play high end games in Linux (are there high end games for
Linux?) I would expect to buy another card for that, but no
major games are in my Linux plans at this point.
How much horsepower is needed? Is Linux as bloated as
Windoze XP? Half as bloated? I would not run XP with less
than 1 gig of RAM, less than 2 point some gig of processor,
and so on. I wish to plan a reasonable set of hardware. Any
info from experienced users would be valuable .
For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
to be planned for.
Well, if I just had a "resource hog" comparison of Linux with
XP that would give me an idea of what to expect.
I have little idea what distribution of Linux to buy. I am looking
at Xandros and SUSE. I have no interest in "sport" at this
time, but seek the easy way in - at least to get started for the
first time.
Obviously, I could be less lazy and read until I figure all of
this out for myself, but, here again, I am not interested in
sport. The web is loaded with huge volumes of info on
Linux, but in this case it seems to be that the huge volume
of data only obscures the subject. After some considerable
time spent treading through web pages on the subject, I
have found little of what I actually seek.
Useful information will be appreciated.
=======
armhead
=======
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
- POPULAR MECHANICS article forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
=======
J.O. Aho
> I have a real nice case and power supply, and a questionable
> mother board. HD ATA 100 or less - no SATA. Would I be
> able to use SATA with Linux anyway?
Sure, SATA is nowadays supported.
> Video AGP - no PCI express. Would I be able to use PCI express
> with Linux anyway?
Works fine too, specially with the closed source nVidia drivers.
> I would buy a gig of RAM, but if Linux is less of
> a hog than XP that might be pointless overkill.
All depends on what you will be using, there are things that uses loads of
ram, and you may want to run a lot heavy programs, so it's difficult to say if
the 1g would be an overkill or not in your case.
> I have on hand a used NVIDIA 5200 AGP video card. I am
> guessing that this would be reasonable enough. If I want to
> play high end games in Linux (are there high end games for
> Linux?) I would expect to buy another card for that, but no
> major games are in my Linux plans at this point.
Doom3 and Quake4 may be familiar names for you, those you find as GNU/Linux
native binaries. There are of course people who do play games like GuildWars
with Cedega/Wine/CrossOffice.
> How much horsepower is needed? Is Linux as bloated as
> Windoze XP? Half as bloated? I would not run XP with less
> than 1 gig of RAM, less than 2 point some gig of processor,
> and so on. I wish to plan a reasonable set of hardware. Any
> info from experienced users would be valuable .
Everything depends on what you do, if you setup a gateway which handles light
load mailserver/webserver, then you are more than ok with 64MB ram on a
Pentium 166MHz machine.
If you are going for professional video effect work, then you need those gigs
or mem and as fast cpu as you can find for the mainboard.
> For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
> processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
> to be planned for.
Then anything that you find that fits your machine should be okey.
> I have little idea what distribution of Linux to buy. I am looking
> at Xandros and SUSE. I have no interest in "sport" at this
> time, but seek the easy way in - at least to get started for the
> first time.
www.distrowatch.com has listed most of the distros, you can there see what
fits you the best, a popular distro don't have to mean it's made for you, look
in the distro description.
You will have links to where to download the distros too.
//Aho
Walter Mautner
> I have long wished to look into Linux. I have some parts here,
> and intend to buy enough more to build a PC for this purpose.
>
....
> I have a real nice case and power supply, and a questionable
> mother board. HD ATA 100 or less - no SATA. Would I be
> able to use SATA with Linux anyway? Video AGP - no PCI
> express. Would I be able to use PCI express with Linux
> anyway? I would buy a gig of RAM, but if Linux is less of
> a hog than XP that might be pointless overkill.
>
Linux - at least recent distributions - will support SATA and pci express,
and it likes much memory (makes better use of it than windows).
But then, linux exists for everything from a wristwatch to BlueGene, it is
really versatile.
> I have on hand a used NVIDIA 5200 AGP video card. I am
Linux likes nvidia because there are good drivers made by nvidia.
> guessing that this would be reasonable enough. If I want to
> play high end games in Linux (are there high end games for
> Linux?) I would expect to buy another card for that, but no
> major games are in my Linux plans at this point.
>
No gamer here as well, but you may google for linux games :)
> How much horsepower is needed? Is Linux as bloated as
> Windoze XP? Half as bloated? I would not run XP with less
> than 1 gig of RAM, less than 2 point some gig of processor,
> and so on. I wish to plan a reasonable set of hardware. Any
> info from experienced users would be valuable .
>
Linux is running solid-state devices like routers, cellphones/pdas, and
128000 cpu halls like the BlueGene as well, and everything in between.
You can have DSL "Damn Small ..." running from a pendrive on a P133, and a
full-fledged shiny rocky half-transparent cube-rotating gui on something
like a 2 GHz PIV.
> For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
> processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
> to be planned for.
>
There is firefox and openoffice (looks the same as for windows) ... and you
may as well watch your dvds with linux, burn cds/dvds, do audio- and video
editing, run your home servers/router/firewall for your home network in the
background,while listening to/ripping music cds and having much fun.
> Well, if I just had a "resource hog" comparison of Linux with
> XP that would give me an idea of what to expect.
>
Linux can be as much a resource "hog" as XP ... when doing all that above
(at once) while running the latest KDE/compiz/beryl combo. But it cannot
beat Vista as I know. Usually linux runs the compiz/beryl stuff with pcs
just barely adequate for XP, where Vista will refuse to show anything but a
basic look.
> I have little idea what distribution of Linux to buy. I am looking
> at Xandros and SUSE. I have no interest in "sport" at this
> time, but seek the easy way in - at least to get started for the
> first time.
>
www.distrowatch.org, but you will get overrun by the sheer amount of
different distributions.
For a starter, try (k)ubuntu or Mandriva, or knoppix to get a glance without
touching the harddrive first.
> Obviously, I could be less lazy and read until I figure all of
> this out for myself, but, here again, I am not interested in
> sport. The web is loaded with huge volumes of info on
> Linux, but in this case it seems to be that the huge volume
> of data only obscures the subject. After some considerable
> time spent treading through web pages on the subject, I
> have found little of what I actually seek.
>
You won't find a boat full of fish here (well someone may haunt you with
foul outdated ware), just a fishing rod instead.
--
vista policy violation: Microsoft optical mouse found penguin patterns
on mousepad. Partition scan in progress to remove offending
incompatible products. Reactivate MS software.
Linux 2.6.17-mm1,Xorg7.1/nvidia [LinuxCounter#295241,ICQ#4918962]
Jeroen Geilman
> I have long wished to look into Linux. I have some parts here,
> and intend to buy enough more to build a PC for this purpose.
>
> However, I start out not knowing many of the basic facts.
>
> I have a real nice case and power supply, and a questionable
> mother board. HD ATA 100 or less - no SATA. Would I be
> able to use SATA with Linux anyway? Video AGP - no PCI
> express. Would I be able to use PCI express with Linux
> anyway? I would buy a gig of RAM, but if Linux is less of
> a hog than XP that might be pointless overkill.
It can be, but it works quite differently.
For example, I have two desktops here - one AMP XP 1700+ @1466MHz, with 512
MB DDR400,a 40GB ATA100 drive and an nvidia FX 5200 AGP card.
It runs Ubuntu with compiz/beryl very nicely, even though the FX 5200 is
rather a low-end card.
You won't yet know what compiz or Beryl are, but suffice it to say that it
can do things *now* that Vista will not have in a year - or ever.
Seriously.
The other desktop is an AMD64 3200+ @ 2GHz, with 2GB dual-channel DDR400 and
a WD Raptor 10krpm SATA drive, with decent nvidia 6600GTX - a mid-budget
beast that runs Oblivion playably at 1280x1024.
But it also has XP, and that just starts sucking more monkey balls every
day; the install is over a year old, which is the longest I have ever done
with any installation of any Windows version - ever.
And it shows; if I had the time I would wipe it and start fresh.
> I have on hand a used NVIDIA 5200 AGP video card. I am
> guessing that this would be reasonable enough.
More than reasonable - it's what I use.
> If I want to
> play high end games in Linux (are there high end games for
> Linux?) I would expect to buy another card for that, but no
> major games are in my Linux plans at this point.
>
> How much horsepower is needed?
That depends - obviously - on what you intend to do with it, and how much
eye candy you require :)
> Is Linux as bloated as
> Windoze XP? Half as bloated? I would not run XP with less
> than 1 gig of RAM, less than 2 point some gig of processor,
> and so on. I wish to plan a reasonable set of hardware. Any
> info from experienced users would be valuable .
You did not mention what kind of motherboard, nor what CPU you will put on
it, but anything above 1GHz will do fine for Web browsing and office work.
As for the rest, "bloat" does not have the same meaning on Linux than it has
on Windoze - Linux has no registry, and no insane intermingling of system
files and DLLs that all want to be loaded whenever you click a button on
your mouse.
On Linux, "bloat" generally refers to having more stuff installed on your
system than you need - but it won't slow it down noticably.
You could run a fully functional graphical Linux system on under 500 MB.
That's 500 MB of *hard drive space*, not RAM.
> For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
> processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
> to be planned for.
One of the good things is that this does not actually matter all that much -
you could replace everything but the hard drive that Linux is installed on
when you buy new hardware, and get away with maybe editing at most 10
configuration files to get it all working again.
Then you can copy and swap out your hard drive when you get a new one.
Say a few hours to upgrade ALL of your hardware *without re-installing a
single thing* - try that with Windoze!
Actually, I wouldn't even try that with Windoze at all - I tend to wipe and
re-install whenever I change so much as a video card.
> Well, if I just had a "resource hog" comparison of Linux with
> XP that would give me an idea of what to expect.
That's actually quite difficult to do.
They are so very different - in philosphy and in function - that what has
meaning on Windoze (if anything has) may well be irrelevant on Linux.
And vice versa, what has meaning on Linux probably won't work on Windoze -
either that, or Microsoft has never heard of it :)
> I have little idea what distribution of Linux to buy.
You don't buy Linux.
> I am looking at Xandros and SUSE. I have no interest in "sport" at this
> time, but seek the easy way in - at least to get started for the
> first time.
Neither of those are necessarily "easier" to start with than any number I
could name, and the obvious downside is that they are not free.
I would suggest Ubuntu: www.ubuntulinux.com.
If downloading one CD is too much work for you, they will ship you any
number you like - for free.
Here, I must have a few left lying around somewhere...
One big tip: get version 6.06LTS ("Dapper Drake") rather than the newest
one, as that has some serious issues.
> Obviously, I could be less lazy and read until I figure all of
> this out for myself, but, here again, I am not interested in
> sport.
It's like this: to get a working system with Internet connectivity and
office applications takes, on average, less work than on Windows.
To get to the really cool stuff, or maybe solve some difficult issues, will
take more time - but the upside is that *everything* is solvable.
Things that will take some time on Linux - if you have them - are: wireless
networking, USB (possibly printers, probably webcams, definitely gadgets),
and any kind of quirky (read: rare) hardware like video processing cards or
serial liver transplant interfaces (the parallel ones inexplicably work
quite well).
That said, you will certainly see benefit if you use A-class components for
motherboard and video/sound cards - things just work better, sometimes
*much* better than with so-so or "cheap" hardware.
I use Asus, Gigabyte or comparable for preference - both mainboards and
video.
I will never use unknown or white label Taiwanese motherboards again - not
even for a scrappy little fileserver.
If it crashes, it's usually gone for good, and you're left trying to
re-animate your hard drive with 100GB of your bestest MP3s...
For Linux - but generally for every OS - my order of importance where
quality is concerned is something like:
#1 - mainboard. if it's not good, everything sucks.
#2 - memory. ditto
#3 - hard drive. same again, I usually get WD or Maxtor.
#4 - everything else.
Of course you need good power, and a CPU - but there are no bad CPUs to
speak of, and buying decent power just means spending a little more than
nothing, which I think you have covered.
As mentioned previously, even though what kind of video card you get doesn't
really matter, Linux works very well with nvida-based GPU's, as nvidia
makes an excellent Linux driver - which is actually the same one that they
make for Windows, just a few versions behind.
Okay, rambled on long enough - good luck!
--
All your bits are belong to us.
orhan
>
> For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
> processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
> to be planned for.
Here is what my Novell Desktop (kind of SUSE) is running on since 1997
(current uptime is like 297 days):
Abit mobo with dual Celerons, each vibrating at a whopping 366 Mhz
(overclocked):
Two huge RAM sticks of 256 MB each;
A Diamond Viper 16 MB video card
This baby runs a desktop, too; nothing fancy like KDE or Gnome but the
good old WindowMaker. More than enough for word processing and web surfing.
So, Linux is definitely not a resource hog.
sid
> I have a real nice case and power supply, and a questionable
> mother board. HD ATA 100 or less - no SATA. Would I be
> able to use SATA with Linux anyway? Video AGP - no PCI
> express. Would I be able to use PCI express with Linux
> anyway? I would buy a gig of RAM, but if Linux is less of
> a hog than XP that might be pointless overkill.
>
It supports PATA or SATA or both at the same time.
PCI express works fine, I have used nvidia 6600GT and 8600GT and they
both work in every distro I have tried (and I have tried a lot).
> I have on hand a used NVIDIA 5200 AGP video card. I am
> guessing that this would be reasonable enough. If I want to
> play high end games in Linux (are there high end games for
> Linux?) I would expect to buy another card for that, but no
> major games are in my Linux plans at this point.
>
There are a few native linux games, but a 5200AGP should run them fine.
If you want to run windows games in linux (it can be done) or something
like doom3 for linux, that can be done too, but I'd prefer PCI Express
for that.
TBH, windows is really only any good for playing games, if you want to
play games buy an xbox, if you want a computer, linux is the way to go.
> How much horsepower is needed? Is Linux as bloated as
> Windoze XP? Half as bloated? I would not run XP with less
> than 1 gig of RAM, less than 2 point some gig of processor,
> and so on. I wish to plan a reasonable set of hardware. Any
> info from experienced users would be valuable .
depends which distro and what you are doing with it. 1 gig is plenty for
most distros doing basic things. As they get more feature laden, they
tend to need more RAM, or if you are doing anything like video editing
or encoding, that takes more, I added an extra gig to speed up my
virtual machines. They worked fine, but when I was multitasking with the
VM running in background things started to lag. With 2gig, I find it
does not. I can run windows 7 inside linux on a VM fairly well, and
windows xp with no lag at all.
I've put opensuse 11.2 on a 1999 dell with a 100mhz FSB which had a
500mhz CPU, upgraded to 1.3ghz celeron, that was a bit slow, but
everything still worked fast enough as long as only one user was logged in.
The main differences are the type of desktop you use, there is a big
choice. The main two are KDE or Gnome, each has it's advantages or
disadvantages. There are a lot of faster lighter ones too.
>
> For now I will be happy to use Linux for web browsing, word
> processing, and such. Nothing more intense than that needs
> to be planned for.
I've put a lightweight distro on a PC with 64mb of RAM. The same PC
someone had put XP on, and it was a total slug to use. Linux was fine
(if a bit basic), had word processor, firefox browser, and a pop3 email
client, mp3 player, cd burner, etc.
>
> Well, if I just had a "resource hog" comparison of Linux with
> XP that would give me an idea of what to expect.
It is not a resource hog at all, anything that would run XP even half
decently would be more than fine with linux.
>
> I have little idea what distribution of Linux to buy. I am looking
> at Xandros and SUSE. I have no interest in "sport" at this
> time, but seek the easy way in - at least to get started for the
> first time.
>
you don't buy linux, unless you mean buy a CD someone burned for you.
It's free.
