I may build a new box for the Holidays...

[Vincent Trouilliez]

"Cybe R. Wizard" <cybe_r_wizard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> ...what hardware would /you/ suggest for a  devoted Ubuntu fan?

Hmm... it's difficult to give advise, since only you can know what you
want/expect exactly from your new machine.
The only advise I think we can reasonably give, is to favour Linux
friendly hardware vendor, where this is not incompatible with your H/W
specs requirement.

For example, I gather that Intel is a good starting point, as they make
good quality motherboards and have a very positive attitude toward
Linux (chipset drivers, wifi, network, graphics adapter etc...).

Only problem with the Intel on-board graphics card is that it's not
very powerful I hear, so if you need an ATI or Nvidia card, maybe
favour ATI, as a few months ago I remember reading some news wherby ATI
had some plans to cooperate with the Linux world (by freeing their
driver, or some H/W spec, or something...), whereas it looks like
Nvidia won't move an inch in the Linux direction. So buying ATI would
encourage them, and give Nvidia the message.
I also found that the "suspend to RAM" feature is an absolute delight
on my desktop. Once tried, forever in love. I experienced that
this feature is tightly dependant on the video card and driver, so if
your having bugs or glitches due to a binary ATI or Nvidia driver,
don't expect them to fix the problem, whereas with an open source
driver like Intel, at least you can file bugs and help them fix it.
Also, after two years experience with both an ATI and Nvidia based
video cards, trying 2D, 3D, proprietary and free drivers, I have have
had nothing but problems with 3D and proprietary drivers. And the
video driver being such critical part of the system, "problems"
mostly meant unrecoverable failures (system freezes, random reboots,
seg faults). Free drivers OTOH were excellent (perfectly stable
and "glitch" free/smooth going) but had only 2D support, or some 3D
support but not good enough to make full use of the card graphics
capabilities.
so, the Intel graphics chip is the only way of having both the peace of
mind of a good quality driver, along with fully functional 3D support.


For optical drives, I can recommand Plextor, which seems to be the only
brand that is still focused on overall quality rather than price, so
better to support them (especially since your budget is quite
comfortable).

About hard drives, I used to buy Seagate as they had good performance
and were very quiet. But nowadays all hard drives have roughly similar
performances (hard drives technology is reaching its limit...), so raw
performance is not a deciding factor anymore for me, and I prefer to
focus on acoustic comfort. Since Seagate isn't interested in this aspect
anymore (I bought one recently and discovered they didn't implement the
acoustic management feature anymore. E-mailed tech support about it and
got told Seagate's new stance is that their drive are quiet enough and
don't need this feature anymore). OTOH I discovered that Samsung make
great drives and has the opposite stance wrt to noise, and many
comments from users and people around me, and trustable third parties,
all have good words about the overall acoustic confort of the Samsung
drives.

As for processors and RAM, currently I have an old AMD Athlon 1700+
(1,47GHz, 266MHz FSB), and 768 MB of RAM. I like to play with VMWare to
test development version of Ubuntu before replacing the previous stable
release. This brings the machine down to its knees, and is very slow.
This revealed that to "just work", I would need
1) a faster CPU
2) an extra CPU core
3) 1+ GB of RAM

The Intel Core 2 duo gets excellent reviews wrt to performance, and I
just read the other day they will soon have a revision that further
reduces power consumption (sadly X-mas is too short notice :-/ ).
It also is the natural choice is you went for an Intel motherboard.

As for interfaces for the hard drives, I would go for SATA, since they
feature command queueing ("NCQ") which as I understand it, should
optimize the movement of the heads, for the better ("smoother" seek
noise, less mechanical stress/more reliable, better response under
heavy I/O load). Also, regardless of NCQ, SATA is much easier to wire,
no wide ribbon cable to deal with, no master/slave limitation anymore.
Just a point to point connection from the drive to the motherboard. 
This make it easier to build RAID arrays.

As for the monitor, if like me you aren't satisfied with the LCD
screens and prefer CRT's, I can suggest Samsung again. Excellent
picture quality and overall quality, just like their hard drives
And given the low popularity of CRT's these days, they are now very
cheap, so really, no reason to resist. 
I have huge hopes in the "SED" techonology, as it combines the best of
the CRT technology with the best of flat screens, but unfortunately,
they keep delaying it's arrival on the market, and it's not quite clear
whether it's suitable for computer monitor (they made large TV screen
prototypes, but no high-resolution PC monitors yet...). At any rate,
it's not going to be ready before a few years, and you are looking to
buy this week ! ;-)

Mouse: after extensive research, I have to date not found any mouse that
finds my fancy. My lovely 10 year old Microsoft mouse died, and nothing
currently on the market is good enough to replace it... not even
Microsoft's own offering ! :-/ They seem to have lowered their prices a
lot compared to 10 years ago.... and overall quality was lowered
correspondingly :-/
Part of the problem is that I have a big palm and
most mice are just too small to fit my hand. Other part of the problem
is me being left handed.

Keyboard: same as mice: many to chose from, some have good aspects, but
no model had all it takes to satisfy me, even though I really aren't
after anything exotic !!!

computer case: same as mice and keyboards. Lot of stuff on the market,
but most of it is junk. Only decent cases I found were some models from
Lian, but they are very expensive (300 bucks or more).


> Price is only somewhat of an object.  I'd spend upwards of US$2000 if
> absolutely necessary.

So if I were to build a machine for my own X-mas, and had your budget,
it would probably be:

- Some Lian full tower case
- Intel full ATX motherboard, with on-board video
- 2+ GHz Core 2 Duo Intel CPU
- 2 or 4 GB of RAM
- 3 Samsung SATA drives, arranged in (software) Raid 0 or 5
- Plextor optical drives
- 21 inch Samsung CRT monitor


HTH


--
Vince