Any compatable Machine & Disto
 

Peeking around here with a build your own system in mind I'm wondering if anyone has a system and distribution that just fell into place for them. OS, CPU, motherboard, monitor, internet connection... all compatable/working just off the instillation disk first or second time around.

I'm looking at Debian, AMD 4-5k only as a starting point but nothing I'll have to take out a second mortgage for.

Thought sound and video stuff already on the mother board would do well for what I use the system for.

Anyone with a Debian/AMD based system that hasn't been a hassle and is a basic computer, I'd sure appreciate the specifics, particularly CPU, chips and motherboard... well and anything else you might see here on the forum that's causing problems and yours ain't. Oh ouch... see even keyboards and HD's ain't being found. Well any help would be appreciated.

The kernel support a lot of hardware these days so it's a lot more common to find your distro of choice Just Works(tm) out of the box but if you're pedantic like me, do your homework before you build. The HCL here is great and Google is just as good, read reviews and if you buy something and it works, write a review somewhere to help others coming after you.

Recall those do-it-yourself radios we used to get from Radio Shack. The old man started bitching he couldn't afford food, wire & radio parts, pick one! Well that's the way I feel every time I have to open this box and do something. I must admit to still enjoying the tinkering now and again but when I want to use this machine for something, that's just what I want to do. Looks like we are still in the infancy of the computer age. Wonder if I'll live long enough where my biggest decisions will be what size and color and I'll know it will do whatever I can dream up for it. Think I'll go watch some TV...

There are hardware lists out there and you could create a machine "for Linux". But as posted earlier and distro is good (choke) I'm using Debian sarge on an old box now. Slackware I may go back too. The mandriva would be a good distro to go straight to word processing or to buying and selling stocks. Debian will use Gnome a familiar format for mac users sorta. Kde from a mandriva install would relate/equate to win something or other. Using office org would give the word processin, Database, graphics etc that you find from the richest man in the united states/. But he probably doesn't do the work you do, so he might not suggest wind something or othere. Did you have something specific? in mind?

I do the usual news, weather, sports thing in the mornings. Cept for the WeatherBug any browser/OS is fine. Haven't tried to get the Weather Bug on a $180 box I got just to try out Linux/Linspire. But my 10 year old HP (hand me down) machine with win98 is slowly falling apart. Can't connect to the internet any longer with dial up on it and have tried a couple of modems, more and more unexpected shut downs/lock ups/error messages. Never saw a freeware program I didn't like and have a pile of em I use regularly. Spend a quite a bit of time on the blogs lately. Have open a WP or two, desk top notes, spread sheet, browser, calc, small drawing and pix program, CD Dictionary with pronounce all at the same time. Toy with CAD and a thing called POV Ray quite often and write a few lines in Basic when I get one of those flashes of inspiration. Love that FireFox, FoxFire whatever it's called. I'm not looking for the way to expensive high quality sound or pix hardware. More than happy with what's available off the motherboard with no added cards. Have a 8, 30 & 40 gig hard drives I'd like to use with my new system unless they have something noticeable better on the market today. Only using about 10 gig total of the three HD's. Those 3+ inch drives come in handy now and again.

Having peeked around a bit more since my first post the dual OS seems the best approach not just cause I like to have all the toys to play with but because I have CD's and programs that just don't go both ways. Debian/winxp, Deb cause it's promoted as stable/well tested. Winxp cause it should run anything Linux can't. AMD64/dual core/4-5K cause it seems to have come to some sort of maturity, powerful enough, fast enough to handle both win & linux. Oh as aside, I'm hoping one day that linux will have a system that'll turn a tar ball into a running program as easily as win has to turn a zip into a running program.

In gist, spend half my time doing needed stuff here with this machine, personal finances, get news & weather, drawing a project I'm wanting to do and relearning something I slept through first time around. The rest of my computer use is simply playing with all the toys. Not the shoot-em-up joystick kind but little used but occasionally useful techniques/programs that make W-processing, spread sheeting and drawing easier, more fun, reliable.