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

Malcolm rannirl-lc at otherkin.net
Wed Nov 14 20:15:00 EST 2001


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. 

> When ethernet cards were discussed on this list
> last month, everybody recommended 3com or Intel, but you can't actually
> buy either of those now (3com stopped making ethernet cards some time
> ago, and Intel supposedly makes them but hasn't been shipping any to
> stores in quite some time).  

I've had good experiences with Realtek cards (including onboard chips).


just my 0.01p in case it's worth anything. :)




More information about the Techtalk mailing list