On Sun, 2013-04-07 at 11:29 +1200, Phill Coxon wrote: > It's time for me to buy / build a new Linux desktop as my current one is > getting pretty outdated. > > I haven't been paying much attention to hardware for the last couple of > years. I'm also not up to speed on the secure boot issue. > > Is anyone able to chime in with a few quick recommendations? > > Intel i7 vs AMD CPU? Intels are curently less power hungry than AMDs and usually last longer. I wonder what you're doing to require an i7? For a standard desktop without loads of CPU-intensive processing, an i3 will probably be fine. > > Recommended motherboards? > > Do I need to pay attention to the motherboard with regard to the UEFI > secure boot issue? Just take care... ok as yet most of the time. > > I'm most likely going to upgrade my current desktop rather than buy a > full new desktop so really looking only at motherboard, mid range i7 CPU > (or equivalent) and 16Gb of DDR3 RAM. That setup will run multiple VMs with ease - my dev server is over 4 years old now - a quad core AMD Q9400, which I've upgraded to 8GB mem, and it's usually running 4 VMs concurrently, but with no graphics.
My desktop is similar with a quad core AMD FX-4100. If you're like me with multiple firefox instances running with 10's of tabs open, then you will see your memory disappear astonishingly fast. > > Any recommendations would be great. Biggest problem is graphics compatibility at the moment. If you're going onboard check it's supported by your ( I assume you're keeping your current ) distro, if a new graphics card, check long and hard. I'm running debian sarge as a desktop, and ended up with an ancient nVidia GeForce 9400 GT card to get it recognised. This is not a path I recommend to anyone, but I'm a special case (: The best thing I did with my new ( well, probably a year old now ) desktop was to use a 100GB SSD as the boot disk. Now that was money really well spent. > > Also any links to websites that offer suggestions for linux desktop > hardware configurations. > > Thanks! hth, Steve > > > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users -- Steve Holdoway BSc(Hons) MIITP http://www.greengecko.co.nz Skype: sholdowa
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