Here's my .02 cents on building a machine. 1. Memory. You can never have too much of it. I'd say try to get a board that'll do 8GB with the expectation you'll be there at some point. 2. CPU: go duel at a minimum. If you could swing a quad I'd say go for it. 3. Video card: Get something that will do HDMI and is capable of duel head. I've got a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS with 512MB of video memory and it cost me a whopping 40 dollars! 4. Harddrives: If your going to spring for 1, go ahead and buy two and then mirror them. Mirrored drives have now saved my ass on three occasions. 5. Case: Honestly I like cases that don't resemble a disco under my desk. I'm also fond of 120mm case fans. They move a shit load of air and are quiet. Power Supply: I wouldn't go smaller than a 350W. If you ever decide to suddenly add two more drives or a burner, nothing sucks more than your power supply being the weak link. 6. OS: Do it yourself. I'm not sure if Ubuntu will let you mirror drives at install, I know the Red Hat family of distros will. Doing your own install will at least give you an explicit understanding of what packages you've installed. Heck we could probably make a meeting out of helping you install and tweak your machine! Later, Tim. On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 8:02 AM, Gregory Avedissian <avedis.g@verizon.net>wrote:
Brian McLinden wrote:
What do you think about this workaround -- http://www.inatux.com/order These are FSF/FOSS people. I can't see
I would recommend more than their base system. Go with a dual-core cpu and probably 2G memory, since it's so cheap now ($30-40 at newegg), and bigger hard drive (e.g. 250GB for around $50). How much do they want with those upgrades?
And, for cable broadband and live streaming of audio and video, what combination or package(s) of HW ad SW should I ask for. Wired case? Wireless case?
If you're talking about wired vs. wireless network, it's a lot easier to go with wired. Any linux distro will get you online with a basic desktop installation. (OK, there are probably exceptions.) You'll also get audio and video players. For audio and video, you might need to install additional codecs, but that's generally pretty easy to do.
Why don't you want to install the OS yourself?
4. What Linux distribution would you pair with Unix?
And, what will I learn from one that I don't learn from the other?
I'm just going to reiterate what others said. You'll learn a lot from installing the OS yourself. Ubuntu is a good choice if you're new to linux, but anything in the top 5 or 10 in the list at distrowatch.com is probably a good choice. The installation procedure is pretty easy these days (on the major distros).
Leave room on your hard drive for additional partitions to try other flavors of linux if you want. That's sometimes a better choice than trying it in a VM, because then you get to see how the OS works with your hardware. That tends to be more of an issue when you're using the latest hardware.
Greg
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