[Techtalk] Best components for a new Linux box? (was: Building boxen)

[Julie]

Malcolm wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 13 November 2001 11:48 pm, Akkana wrote:
> 
> > I've found recent Linux distros to be very forgiving of motherboard,
> > video card, and all the IDE disks.  For motherboard and video card,
> > you're safest if you avoid the latest-and-greatest and stick to hardware
> > that's a year or so old.
> 
> I would also personally recommend staying away from onboard video chips with
> shared memory architectures (where they use a reserved chunk of main memory
> as video RAM). I've had a lot of problems with those. The extra for a
> dedicated graphics board is definitely worth it.
> 
> > Ethernet cards are the biggest problem.  My husband just went
> > through a 2-day ordeal trying to get a new network card (because I
> > swiped our last spare for my new box).  Everything that we could
> > buy at the local Fry's or MicroCenter was something known not to
> > work or to be flaky with Linux -- Neagear, Linksys, and lots of
> > Taiwanese no-name boards (mostly NE2000 clones -- apparently a
> > real NE2000 chipset works, but clones usually don't, including
> > the one we tried).
> 
> I've not had problems with Linksys in the past.

What's a "Linksys"?  The most recent Intel I bought has caused
fits under WinMe and I desparately need something that will work
with both Linux and WinMe.

As for NetGear, so long as there is only one NIC in the machine
the NetGear NICs I've used have worked well.  But add a second
NIC and forget it.
-- 
Julianne Frances Haugh             Life is either a daring adventure
jockgrrl at austin.rr.com                 or nothing at all.
					    -- Helen Keller