Dear All,

I intend to build myself an AMD64X2 (probably 4400) desktop system, and I have trouble choosing the right hardware.

My main requirement is buying from linux and open-source friendly hardware providers. I am very scared and annoyed by the perspective that only binary drivers are becoming available for key system component. I believe that we should care about buying hardware from open-source supportive providers.

My second requirement is buying reliable, robust, hardware. I might run it almost 24h a day.

I am also concerned by buying rather silent hardware.

Main use is development (coding in Ocaml, C, Lisp, ...), browsing, writing documentation (usually under Emacs with LaTeX, sometimes with OpenOffice). I am definitely not a gamer, and probably not a 3D fan (unless X11R7 with openGL is heading there).

In particular I have the following concerns

The motherboard chipset would probably be some Nforce4 (because the other current alternative is ATI which is worse), but it seems that Nforce is not supporting open-source drivers. For example, the forcedeth Ethernet module seems to have been reverse engineered without any support by Nvidia. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm currently contemplating buying an Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard

Regarding graphic cards, I want dual DVI output (might have 2 17" DVI LCD screens) but I don't value that much high 3D performance; however I really want a silent card. The
Asus Radeon EAX800 Silencer/2DTV seems interesting, but ATI is not at all supporting open-source drivers. So I might consider a Gigabyte GV-NX68T256DH GeForce 6800 GT card also, or perhaps even a Matrox one (matrox used to give good support to opensource).

I believe that the rest of the hardware (SATA disk, ...) is open-source software neutral.

I'm seeking recent pages about good Linux support in a completely opensource way:

vanilla 2.6.16.x linux kernel running ok (without any proprietary drivers)

vanilla Xorg X11R7 graphic server running ok (without any proprietary drivers).

FWIW, I do have an MSI S270 Turion64 laptop, and I am very disappointed with it (the ATIX200 chipset is very bad) See my page on it at starynkevitch.net/Basile/msi_s270_linux.html

I believe that find recent information about open-source friendly hardware is difficult (e.g. the motherboard hardware reviews here are quite old).

Thanks for your comments and advices

Regards

Basile STARYNKEVITCH

Monarch Computers sales some excellent workstation and servers all with Linux on them.

They are of course, not the only ones that sale open source systems. Pick your favorite distro and goto thier homepage, odds are they have a list somewhere of vendors saleing hardware with their OS on it.

Living in France (you know, in Europe: Chirac, frog-eating, US bashing, the Concorde, Arianespace, ... and all the stuff) I will certainly not buy in the US (but in France, paying in Euros).

But my question is not where to buy stuff, but (given that I will built my own system, as usual) what are the components which are open-source friendly?.

First, I want to be sure that my hardware is supported by open-source software (no closed binary drivers).

And most importantly, with the Euros I will spend, I want to support companies & producers which are supporting (and ideally providing) open-source drivers.

Actually, I feel more and more scared by the fact that some key components are not very well supported by opensource software. I really hate the idea that in a near future (because of DRM, Intellectual Property, etc...) we won't be able anymore to run a fully open-source system.
This is a big concern for me, and I really want to avoid buying such hardware.

If there are opensource drivers to my hardware, I might be able (if interested enough) to port the drivers to exautic systems like HURD, VSTa, ...etc.. If the hardware has only closed source drivers, this is impossible.

LinuxQuestions.org has a hardware compatibility list, you can try looking there to make sure everything you buy works. The rest I don't think I can help you with.

Yes, but for motherboards it is not very up to date, and I do have the concern about open-source drivers.

Here are some sub-questions :

what are the good graphical cards supported by an Xorg 7 (ie X11R7) graphic server -without any additional driver, using only the open-source drivers provided by XOrg foundation-? I don't even know the performance of recent usual Nvidia or ATI graphical cards with X11R7 without any additional binary driver!


What are the northbridge/southbridge motherboard chipsets well supported by Linux 2.6.16.X kernel (vanilla kernel from http://kernel.org/ without proprietary drivers)? I don't even know if all the chipset on Asus A8N-SLI Premium, including the NVIDIA nForce4 SLI chipset, is fully supported by opensource drivers? Maybe yes with the reverse-enginneered forcedeth module.

Who are the corporations (hardware providers) misbehaving with the open-source communities? I heard that ATI behave worse than Nvidia... by hiding more information...

Thanks for reading

Basile STARYNKEVITCH (France)

ABIT's A8N-Ultra or ABIT K8N-SLI is much better and cheaper. They are both passive cooled. You have to be picky what ASUS models you select because many contain hardware that is not supported by Linux.

For SATA, I do not recommend Promise, Silicon Image, and Marvell chips because they are closed source. I sugget Highpoint's RocketRAID 15xx SATA controllers. If you want hardware RAID, 3ware makes good controllers.

nVidia supports Linux more than other companies even though they are closed source. Really nVidia's hardware is easier to install and to configure than ATI products.

The best sound card is based on VIA's ENVY1724HT chips. Either buy Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1LT or Terratek Aureon Space.

The best video capture chip is Philips SAA713x. It gives you very, very good quality videos.

The nVidia NIC can be used. PCI NICs are more reliable and work well.

I suggest waiting until the AM2 socket to come out. It is faster and it will contain virtual hardware instructions that programs like from Xensource (a free open-source that runs other OS beside the present OS) to run other OS at the same time Linux is running.

Gentoo is completely open source.

I recommend using ECC memory because it is a must for dual processor systems. Just ECC memory costs about 10 US dollars more.

Be picky with power supplies. A cheap power supply does not last long and it will not provide good filteration and voltage regulation for the computer. The power supply can cost up to the cost of the processor. I suggest buying one that has universal voltage that adjusts it self to the voltage and active power factor control.

Depending where you live. The parts can be hard or easy to find. Few parts can be impossible to get.

Gentoo is completely open source.