Purchasing a Linux PC

[Walter McLendon]

Just to let you all know, I decided to order an Acer Aspire T690-UD440A for
$399.98
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=34629
9 instead of the $199 Everex TC2502 gPC I originally asked about. Its loaded
and should really be a nice PC for $400. Of course it has Vista Premium on
it so I will have to test that out before I introduce any Linux OS. My
brother bought the same Acer PC and loves it, as well as Vista. I would
surely hate to admit to loving any Windows product.

>From your responses, I can see that I have a lot to learn about Linux
products. I bought both the Romtec Trios I and Trios II a few years ago from
TigerDirect.  Visit
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/trios2/trios2.html  Both
would allow you to boot up from one of three hard drives on your PC. Trios
II would only run one hard drive while Trios I had all three running at the
same time. I had Lindows on one hard drive so it was a perfect machine until
Romtec dropped the product. I never had any problems with I but II finally
started doing some weird things (I have forgotten what) but I still have
both units. I can not find a similar product today but they had a great item
that could be used on all PC's today. I am thinking I paid about $80 for
Trios II. A thumb drive should do the same but getting it to boot might be a
problem. Its time to do away with hard drives, I think Apple has a new PC
doing just that.

I want a PC with many thumb drives so I can have my email software on one, a
word processor on one, data storage on several, with the idea of keeping
everything separate. When you get all the junk off a PC, then it does not
take much RAM to operate. Maybe in another 10 years, Microsoft will realize
that.

Thanks for your input and advice, I look forward to reading all the subjects
you post.

Merry Christmas,

Walter

-----Original Message-----
From: linuxsa-bounces at linuxsa.org.au
[mailto:linuxsa-bounces at linuxsa.org.au]On Behalf Of Michael Ritter
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 5:49 PM
To: LinuxSA LinuxSA
Subject: RE: Purchasing a Linux PC




To all that responded to “RE: Purchasing a Linux PC”,

Thank you for all that responded to my input to the LinuxSA mailing list.
The responses that my posting received were far more interesting than my
original message. I am fascinated with what people are running.

Firstly, I need to point out that I have 0.4 of a Terra byte, notice the
decimal point in front of the 4, or if you would prefer about 400 GB.
Considering the responses I have received and the details that people are
running from a basic 1.2 Terra byte upwards, ~400GB is, unfortunately, not
really that impressive. Thank you Kim Hawtin for spotting the decimal point
in front of the 4. Isn’t it just like an Engineer to be careful with
physical quantities in their calculations? Who wants to be 10 times out and
in error?

I purchased and made a computer with the sole purpose of running Linux
(Ubuntu) and never really considered dual booting with Windows XP or running
a windows emulator like wine. After all if you’re trying to get away from
Windows and enjoy the Linux experience why not just abandon Windows all
together for a dedicated machine?

When I built this computer I thought that any new mother board would run
Linux. I was only partly correct. My Gigatech mother board has a video chip
set so new the drivers had a bug in it and it wouldn’t run 3 dimensional
graphics. [Bug 43154] Re: freezes with 3D applications on VIA Unichrome
K8M800, KM400, VIA K8M800 Chipset. Anything using OpenGL would lock up the
video card first noticed in the Ubuntu Gnome screen savers.

The answer is to purchase an nVidia card. NVidia is well supported on Linux
and is the only careful and deliberate purchase to ensure that Linux will
run on my box correctly. I have heard that some wireless networking cards
won’t work. Be careful in your selection. These little glitches in life are
always crop up don’t they? Nothing ever runs smoothly.

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