On Wed, 10 Jan 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I informally act as a hardware purchase advisor for a large number of > > friends, and until I see a really fundamental attitude/business > practice > > shift I'll be no more advising the purchase of a compaq or similar > than > > I would a winmodem. > > So can anyone advise what are the good Linux compatible brands to look > at > and what to avoid? Don't buy a "brand" in the sense of a whole machine. You should look for quality components, and then find a good value OEM (not a big name OEM) to build them into a machine. It depends a lot on how much time and interest you have, if you have plenty research each part and consider building the machine yourself. If you have less then take someone's advice about a seller and bits. At the moment I'm generally recommending some of the following stuff (and bought some of it myself). Any decent case >= minitower c 300 watt PS AMD Duron Socket A CPU (Great value, can be easily upgraded to T'bird) Kingmax TinyBGA PC133 SDRAM (Quality, and can be found quite cheap) An Nvidia vid card (TNT2 -> Geforce -> Geforce2 MX depending on money. Nvidia unfortunately have closed source drivers, but they release them for linux, and not too far off the quality of the Window$s ones and improving. I get 90+ fps with a standard Quake3 setup on timedemo1) Any decent brand 7200rpm ATA66+ IDE HD (I chose the IBM DTLA 30GB ATA100) Any familiar brand CDROM/floppy SBLive Value OEM I'm still looking for a good value mobo to go with the Duron, anyone got any suggestions? I bought the Abit KT7 RAID, but it's neither cheap nor completely linux compatible. My video card works pretending to be PCI, but there is no support in the kernel for the VIA KT133 Agpgart bridge. Of course all of this depends on how much you have to spend. If you have very little time, then perhaps the most thing is to know what to avoid. Avoid anything integrated like the plague, replacing the word integrated with the words "not upgradeable" is a fairly accurate practical translation. Look for a case that has room for some extra stuff, like CDRW/DVD drives and extra HD's. And do not buy a "winmodem" under any circumstances. > So what do I buy? Sounds like Compaq is out. Dell had an offer last week > for a P4 > for $2,800 which sounded good value but this was at the top of my > budget. Are Dell > generally OK? What about IBM, HP, Gateway etc. If you ask the sales > people in > the stores if a particular brand is Linux compatible the answer is > always (inevitably) > Yes. But is it necessarily so? No, it's definately not necessarily so. Most people who work selling computers have absolutely no clue about them, and answer yes to these types of questions as a reflex. I wouldn't buy the Dell you are talking about either, if it's the one on their website. It's a very, very basic spec machine, and since the P4 is enjoying a very poor reputation, it hardly seems worth it. Also, in terms of upgradability it seems poor, for example to buy another 128MB of ram for that machine is $801.90. Lastly, it's unclear from the website whether the video and sound cards are in fact integrated and whether the modem is a winmodem. For your $2800, I'd be suggesting a slower cpu, but with a better graphics (Geforce2 MX) and sound card, a better case and PS, twice as much RAM from a quality brand, a better HD that's twice as big etc. You'd also get a better monitor, one you could choose yourself, and almost certainly a better motherboard. After all that you'd still have enough change for a cheap printer, CDRW drive or DVD drive or for your pocket. I think it would be a much better system, and certainly a lot more upgradeable when you decide to get into video editing etc. Personally I'd say that all of the brands you mention are a mistake. As some people have pointed out if you can find a use for them in their existing configuration, and never want to modify them, then they are slightly overpriced but otherwise OK. Personally I've never bought a machine I thought I'd never want to modify. I don't know of a seller at the moment I really like, but I'm sure there are people here who can make suggestions. I just buy the parts from the cheapest reputable seeming source I can find and build it myself. Hope that helps. Martin. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://slug.org.au/lists/listinfo/slug
