Blog Post

By Richard A. Johnson | July 29th, 2008

What should I get?

By Richard A. Johnson on Published: July 29, 2008 at 7:15 pm

Howdy my fellow lazy webbers! I have been having issues with one of my desktops (currently a Pentium D with 1GB DDR2 and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) and I am looking at upgrading. It seems these days the reviews are kind of garbage like out there so I was wondering what you all prefer. I am an Intel fan nowadays and have been using Intel chipsets with integrated video because it always just worked for me and KDE 4 or when using Gnome and Compiz. I would like for it to continue to work as well. Something dual-core or more, DDR3 if possible, and gigabit LAN if possible. If you know of a good setup that you would recommend for a Linux only box, please speak up. Thanks!

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  • http://roaksoax.wordpress.com Andres Rodriguez

    Howdy!!
    I’m not an intel fan… so i’ll describe my AMD Desktop:

    AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0GHz) 125W, 2gb RAM Kingston 800Mhz, Samsung Sata 250 gb HD, nVidia Geforce 8500GT (512MB), D-link Wireless card DWA-510, Chipset: Asus M2N SLI that has a gigabit ethernet card.

    Everything works excellent and i have compiz and stuff but i’m a Gnome User :) .

    Well have fun looking for your perfect desktop machine :D xD

  • http://www.toothrot.net toothrot

    http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200805.ars

    and

    http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200807.ars

    are basically perfect guides with full explanation.

    Quadcore intels are so cheap, and so fun to compile C software with by setting 6 jobs in Make =D

  • http://www.toothrot.net toothrot

    Oh yeah, and make sure you look at the *cheap* sections, because they are more than enough to do everything you could need.

  • Timucin Kizilay

    You can look at the intel branded mainboards. They come with intel chipsets and most of the time, they run linux without problems. I have an old intel mainboard with 915 chipset and pentium 4 cpu and it works out of the box with kubuntu. My experience with mainboards is this : Anything from intel works with linux without problems. Some other brands put some strange ethernet chips and they are making problems with linux.

  • http://www.reigndropsfall.net Bryan Forbes

    I would suggest looking into an ASUS book-size barebones PC http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=1&l2=3. I have had two of these and loved them! They work great with Ubuntu and are quite small; plus, you can save money by buying a barebones rather than a pre-manufactured computer (AND it doesn’t come with a crappy OS). I’m currently using a P3-P5G33 with a quad-core processor. It’s SUPER quiet and extremely fast. It has SATA, 8 USB ports (2 in front, 6 in back), firewire, and a card reader that works in Ubuntu. I even bought a low-profile NVIDIA 7300 GS because the integrated Intel drivers were having a problem driving my 1920×1200 screen with Compiz running. The only thing that you want that it doesn’t have is DDR3, but I’m running with 4GB of DDR2 and it’s blazing fast. Let me know if you want any more info. Hope this helps!

  • CyberBob

    I like the Intel Classic series of motherboards. Specifically the DG35EC, which handles either Core 2 Duo’s or Quad core processors, has gigabit ethernet and also has the latest and greatest Intel X3500 video.

    Bob

  • http://tonyyarusso.com/ Tony Yarusso

    Two things I’d suggest looking at:
    1) System76 offerings – decent systems that will support Linux (Ubuntu), and a cool company. $350 – $2,200.
    2) Sun workstations – they start at very reasonable levels, but if you wanted to blow your savings and go for all-out raw power, this would be the way to do it. Also supports Linux (Red Hat). $900 – $22,000+.

  • Ernst Persson

    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_x4500hd&num=1

    “Earlier this month Intel had announced the GMA X4500 series, which is their latest and greatest when it comes to integrated graphics processors. These IGPs were greeted by same-day Linux support (it had actually arrived before the chipset was announced), but it’s still next to impossible to find motherboards using the G43 and G45 Chipsets that bear this IGP. Fortunately, however, our friends at Super Micro have come through and we have managed to get our hands on the C2SEA. The Super Micro C2SEA is an ATX motherboard that uses the Intel G45 Chipset in conjunction with an ICH10 Southbridge. This motherboard provides Intel GMA X4500HD graphics with VGA and HDMI interfaces. In this article, we are looking at the performance of this new Intel graphics processor under Linux. “

  • http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com Mackenzie

    I always stick to Intel graphics, but I haven’t actually had issues with the others at the office, so…

    Anyway, why not go for a System76, ZaReason, or Dellbuntu?

  • Steve

    what did you end up with?

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