Tim> Here's my .02 cents on building a machine. I'm going to chime in here as well with my thoughts on system building options. 0. Motherboard. - integrated vs discrete graphics. This is a toughie. For a home server, I'd go integrated. Heck, I'd try to get something with a serial console so I could manage it without a KVM, since ideally the system will be headless most of the time and just serving data, etc. - PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports or all USB? Depends on what you have and whether you're replacing it all or using existing stuff. - PCIe slots. - unless you game, don't bother with lots of x16 slots, maybe two, but get as many slots as you can. If you have legacy PCI cards you want to use, that's another factor. Think long term expandability. Remember that PCIe x1 cards will fit in x4,8,16 slots, they just won't get the performance advantage. Doesn't go the other way though. - SATA ports on board. I'd get a bunch if I can, since if you ever load up the system with lots of drives, you want to put off the day you need a PCIe SATA board. This is why I like x4 or x8 slots for the future. 0b. Network Gigabit by default. Upgrade your home switch too. If you can, get dual Gig ports, but don't sweat it too much otherwise. - skip wireless for a desktop, unless you absolutely need to put it somehwere with only power access. Then get an 802.11n card for the system and upgrade your Access Point (AP) as well. Tim> 1. Memory. You can never have too much of it. I'd say try to Tim> get a board that'll do 8GB with the expectation you'll be there Tim> at some point. Absolutely. Spending more on memory is a better idea than more on a slightly faster CPU. Don't sweat DDR2 vs DDR3 at this time unless you're seriously number crunching. Tim> 2. CPU: go duel at a minimum. If you could swing a quad I'd say Tim> go for it. Dual. Sorry, being pedantic. But I agree. I also lean heavily towards AMD because I like that they've been doing documentation drops on their GPUs, and because I want CPU vendor competition, not just one vendor. But as a suggestion, graph CPU speed vs $$$ for a family of systems and look for the sweet spot, which is where the price goes up sharply for just a small gain in speed. Do the same for the number of cores, and put them on the same graph. Think about cache, etc. Right now, the Triple Core AMD X2s looks nice. For a set amount of $$$, I'd personally go with more cores vs higher speed. Also, NEVER overclock. It's just not worth it. Yeah, it makes you feel studly, but esp for a home server, you want stability and low power draw, since it will be on all the time. Oh yeah, think about power disappation. Try to get the lowest wattage parts you can. Another reason why more cores, slower clock freq and lower thermals can be a win. Again, think about whether you really need to spend $100 more to get 200 Mhz of speed. Think how much memory you could buy instead! Or disk space. Tim> 3. Video card: Get something that will do HDMI and is capable of Tim> duel head. I've got a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS with 512MB of video Tim> memory and it cost me a whopping 40 dollars! The thing to think about is whether you go Dual HDMI, or one VGA and one HDMI. Or do you get Dual HDMI and an HDMI->VGA adaptor. One slot or two? Fanless or big honking fan? If you're not playing games, getting a video card which will have good opensource support is my metric. Go AMD. Also, quiet is nice. Tim> 4. Harddrives: If your going to spring for 1, go ahead and buy Tim> two and then mirror them. Mirrored drives have now saved my ass Tim> on three occasions. Hear hear! It's almost tempting to get an USB thumbdrive to boot from, and the two disks are just a mirror MD RAID setup, with LVM on top. Around $100/per drive is a sweet spot, you can get two 1Tb drives mirrored. Nice. Tim> 5. Case: Honestly I like cases that don't resemble a disco under Tim> my desk. I'm also fond of 120mm case fans. They move a shit Tim> load of air and are quiet. I've gotten and been really happy with the CoolerMaster Centurion 5 all black case without any windows. Lots of bays, nice clean design, plenty of IO ports up front to use with USB/Firewire. Tim> Power Supply: I wouldn't go smaller than a 350W. If you ever Tim> decide to suddenly add two more drives or a burner, nothing sucks Tim> more than your power supply being the weak link. Go with a quiet and energy efficient one if you can. Tim> 6. OS: Do it yourself. I'm not sure if Ubuntu will let you Tim> mirror drives at install, I know the Red Hat family of distros Tim> will. Doing your own install will at least give you an explicit Tim> understanding of what packages you've installed. Heck we could Tim> probably make a meeting out of helping you install and tweak your Tim> machine! Absolutely. Have fun with the system. John

I just wanted to comment that installing Windows 7 is a significantly improved experience and its relative difficulty is probably not a selling point for Linux. Linux has plenty of other selling points and I've installed eeebuntu- NBR 3.01 on my wife's netbook, and it works really well but not perfectly. The installation was not foolproof though ( because a certain fool botched it without realizing it for about 2 months.) And some of the settings (acpi, for example) still need to modified in a text editor. Windows 7 on my quad core is not perfect either, (native backup is problematic, and something's keeping native DVD burning from working) but it also works really well. On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Sean Flynn wrote:

I was wondering about why the original poster wanted to buy a system with FreeBSD/Linux installed by the manufacturer. Was the intent to support a freebsd/Linux friendly vendor, or was it to make everything easier.

If possible I like to support Linux friendly vendor. But I can easily say that installing Linux is incredibly easy, especially when compared to installing windows, I don't know if you can justify extra cost just to support a Linux friendly vendor. _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

Good points. I used a Live-thumb-drive to preview eeebuntu. Of course it was also really the only way to install it. No CD on an Asus 901... :) On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 7:26 PM, J.R. Mauro wrote:

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Jim Dibb wrote:

...

I just wanted to comment that installing Windows 7 is a significantly improved experience and its relative difficulty is probably not a selling point for Linux.

It is still a far cry from being able to use a Live CD and verify that the entire system will work perfectly before committing to an installation. Also, what I like to call the ``post-install blues'' have not yet been addressed in Windows: i.e., installing a sane browser, office software, etc. etc.

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