| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/20/2007 2:21:41 PM | I've been using PC's for many years and can remember messing about with Windows 2.0
Since then I've gone through all the versions of Windows and currently run XP Pro which is kept updated and generally runs fine. My PC is about 5 years old now and fairly slow by today's standards: AMD Athlon 1GHz CPU, 1.5GB RAM, 40MB HD, ELSA graphics card but it (mostly) does what I want it to.
I'm not into gaming so don't need a top spec machine. I like the idea of a Linux based system but have no experience of using it whatsoever. Ubuntu seems to be a popular distro from reading various posts on here. How important is the hardware though? I'm aware Linux isn't as resource hungry as XP but what would you consider going for if you were upgrading your PC or, possibly buying a new one.
BTW I'm working part time promoting Vista in PC World (they're the UK's largest PC retailer for those people who are beyond these shores). It looks pretty, has some useful features and is fast - providing you have a decent spec machine but personally, I won't touch it for at least 12/18months, not until the usual bugs are sorted. Anyway, if I like what I see with Linux, I may not bother with Vista!
Any advice, comments please? | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/20/2007 3:14:00 PM | Just a quick post, as I've got something else on the go at the same time....
Generally speaking I would say that if you stay a generation or two behind the state-of-the-art hardware (in particular graphics cards) you should be ok.
I mention graphics cards as, in my experience, they're one of the hardest things to get working correctly. However they all tend to work to some degree on a fresh install, and it's just the state-of-the-art stuff that you can have issues with. But if you're no into state-of-the-art you should be fine.
Oh, I should mention something that you probably know already. If you use one of these cheap modems you may find that it's Windows only as, to keep the costs down, they move some of logic into the driver. It's still possible to get it to work, but it's not easy.
If your current machine was brought from a vendor (i.e. not a home build) you can google it to see what joy others have had getting Linux working on it. If you've got a laptop (which I'm guessing from your machine description you've not) a good website is:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/
You can always try a live distro (you mentioned Ubuntu, which you can get a live CD/DVD of) on your current machine, see if it works and you're happy with the performance before committing to a full install or any hardware upgrades.
Hope this helps. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/20/2007 3:29:47 PM | Hello,
My Gentoo Linux machines at home run smoother and faster than the Windows XP laptop I have at work which has much faster hardware. It is important also to note that I run a lightweight user interface and I usually choose lightweight applications. Someone that use a Linux OS with fancy user interface and bigger applications might not notice as much a difference too.
I have: AMD Athlon 1200MHz 256MB and PowerPC 700MHz 256MB at home. Runs smooth and faster than Windows XP on Intel 2.4GHz 2GB RAM. I have the standard XP installation thing setup by the admin of my company. Someone at home might have less stuff running etc.
From my point of view, the scheduler of Windows XP has performance bug. Sometimes, the XP hangs a few seconds... Does not run smoothly.
I think Linux has better peforming I/O (disk access) than Windows but I don't have any measurement. It was way better than Win 95 (the last Windows I used at home).
Ubuntu is one of the Linux systems recommend for beginners. That's why a lot is heard about it. Some Linux systems like Gentoo are aimed at power users and programmers.
No matter which Linux system you decide to use (even the ones that say they are the most easy), you need to be good with computers. You need to have the patience to read, ask questions in forums, search on the web, etc. These are more community supported than commercially supported systems. You cannot expect to have help from your Internet service provider, drivers for hardware from companies, etc. You need to check yourself what is supported and figure out yourself how to configure (Internet, etc.).
It can take some time to do the installation and configure everything. But once everything is setup things are good. You spend less time administring the system. If you are new, you will probably spend time learning about the system.
If you like to learn new stuff, like to have novelties, changes, play with computers, etc. Linux OSes can be for you.
Have fun,
guy_in_toronto_28 | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/22/2007 4:19:44 AM | Thanks for your advice guys. Think I'll look at Ubuntu for starters, consider what hardware I can use from my existing PC's and then look at building up a better machine.
There's loads of useful s/h parts to pick from - motherboards, CPU's, HD's etc. - some of it reasonably priced too.
Rgds
explorer900 | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/23/2007 12:26:48 AM | Your 1ghz Athlon with 1.5gb of ram would be great for Linux. One of my Linux boxes is running on a 1.33 T-Bird and an old Geforce2 and it runs great. With that kind of hardware available, I wouldn't bother buying anything new. Maybe a cheapo Nvidia or Ati if your video card isn't well supported, thats about it.
My router is running Linux on a 486dx2 33mhz with 8mb of ram, recently upgraded to 16, thank you garbage day! :) Point being, its very forgiving on the hardware side of things.
Just stay away from Gentoo for the moment. I don't think your first experience in Linux should be watching compiler output scroll by for a couple of days.  | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 2/24/2007 7:54:36 AM | | I just got ASUS vintage AE1 barebones works great the graphics wasnt fully suported but work right out of the box . AMD Athlon64 3000, 512 ram 320gb payed $320 for everything . not a gaming machine but great for what i need | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/1/2007 6:08:27 PM | Your miss informed , Linux requires alot of HD space ,more sectors ! Linux doesnt keep a junk yard of stored downloaded info like ,Garbage Collector Windows does!
Try a Live CD first ! DSL , Damn Small Linux ! Play with that ! If you have WinXP ,make sure you download or buy DSL 2.01 Sata ! With Sata support other wise it wont mount !
You can download DSL ,off the net, its free,than burn it to CD from your, ISO image file ! SuSz linux Live CD ,is another good Distro ,its, DVD only ! You might not be happy ,sound cards ,modems ,afew other programs dont always work !
Helps if you can program CPs !
A Live CD , as long as the HD spins the CP should will boot with Linux. *E.R CD in case windows crashes ! Linux Live CD can be used as a Test distro,when buying a used CP with no ( OS ).Also Live CD doesnt store any info on the HD ,info stored in memory only !
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Jemue
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Joined: 1/26/2005
Msg: 8 | |
| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/1/2007 9:21:36 PM | Two ways of buying things I've figured out :
1) Spec up what you want and get it as cheap as you can.
2) Set a budget and get the best you can for it.
Though which ever one you do, accept that as soon as you buy it you will find it better/cheaper some where else ! | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/2/2007 4:15:20 AM | As far as a build for a linix machine, i would venture to say, anything that will run windows would work, though keep in mind that if you build a state of the art machine, that you take chances in the distro not having the drivers yet. This is the build i have, sata 3.0 g/s harddrives x2, amd athlon 64 dual core processor, nvidea 5500 fx, soundblaster audigy, dvd/cdrw, cdr, 10/100 net card. Mind you with that build I had a little bit of a problem setting up the sound card, but for the most part I didnt have a problem at all. Just learning ubuntu though, I dont know if this will help or not, if it does great. :) As far as Vista it will be very resorce commanding, esp with the gui that they have put in. I am a full backer of windows, but then again I wouldent even touch vista on my main machine till at least 16 moneths or more, lol that remindes me of the win xp fiasco.
BTW I am running a ubuntu and win xp ubuntu dual boot | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/10/2007 7:00:27 PM | not trying to be mean just telling the truth... if you dont know without asking or cant figure out on your own if your computer specs are good enough to run linux then you are better off to never even try to install linux or use it and stick to windows for a general user there is no point to using linux over windows... and vista sucks maybe in another year when everything works on vista and they take care of all the wonderfull bugs I would actually consider running it until then its win2k and freebsd..  | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/10/2007 10:06:12 PM | Your box should be fine for linux. I run Slackware, and highly recommend it for its reliability, but it might be a bit much for a beginner. I've heard good things about Ubuntu but don't have any experience with it personally.
Lets break it down a bit:
CPU - this depends on what you are doing with it. One gig is fine for internet and email, and general office stuff. It's probably too slow for video processing (like, say, recording your videotapes using the XviD codec).
Memory - 1 and a half gig is LOTS for just about anything. Linux is good at memory allocation.
Hard drive - depends on what you want to store on it. A couple of gig will hold the linux install, the other 38 you can use for your mp3's and photos, or whatever.
Video card - pretty much anything will work unless you're a gamer.
One way that linux is SO different from Winwhatever is that it keeps evolving...you can download an updated kernel, a new release of KDE, or whatever, so you can always have your OS up to date. As opposed to having to BUY a new release of the OS, which probably won't run your old stuff.
Good luck! | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/14/2007 12:23:58 PM | | Hi I have been spending the last few weeks installing Linux on laptops and desktops. It doesn,t matter on the specs of your machine although it does help if you have a good graphics card. Ubuntu is good for beginners, but you have to remember to go into systems tools and click on update manager as there are updates everyday. If you are a bit daring you can use Solaris although i personally find them both pretty good. Can also give you sites for downloads for good applications. Remember to keep an eye on the kernel and program it to off, otherwise your system will over heat. Feel free to contact me. Have fun with Linux you'll love it. No more viruses yeah. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/14/2007 1:41:47 PM | Linux is only free if your time is worthless - I've run it on and off for years (since Kernel 2.2 was hot news) and always ended up going back to proprietary systems because they took less time to set up and make things work properly
Having said that, I've used Vista and a bit of configuration abnd bug-fixing was enough to send me screaming back to my Mac | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/14/2007 4:37:24 PM |
Linux is only free if your time is worthless - I've run it on and off for years (since Kernel 2.2 was hot news) and always ended up going back to proprietary systems because they took less time to set up and make things work properly
Having said that, I've used Vista and a bit of configuration abnd bug-fixing was enough to send me screaming back to my Mac
I do agree with you that it takes time for the initial setup. For me it takes about 1-2 weeks to complete the configuration. It can also take some time to learn a new OS.
However, I find that Gentoo Linux takes not much time to admin once everything is setup. I don't change my hardware too often though. I do beleive that it is not much time than Windows XP, I would say it is even less. You do things in "chunk". On Windows, each app bug you individually for an update... :)
I like Mac OS X much better than Windows. I will go for it if I would have choice only between these two OSes but it is not the case, there is Gentoo Linux. :)
Different people have different needs, that's why there are different OSes in the first place. Just need to use what you like. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/14/2007 10:07:19 PM | I've been using computers since the early '80s, my first was a ZX80 kit from Maplin, the days when building a computer meant getting the soldering iron out!
Kubuntu is the KDE version of Ubuntu, I have it running both KDE & Gnome (desktop environments) You certainly won't need a beast of a system to run it either. There's next to nothing when it comes to bloatware, only the bits are what you decide to install. You won't need an antivirus, or spyware doctors, nor will you need to defrag it every week, it looks after itself, just simply use it. You may as well try it since its free, there's nothing to lose, if you have an old hard drive kicking about, fire it on there and give it a shot... for a breath of fresh air. You can even run it alongside windows. (if you must!)
As for the Vista thing, that's just a complete rip off of Mac OS X, they stole several of the features macs have had for years, such as Widgets, the Spotlight search engine, even the new chess game in Vista looks like the one OS X has had for years. Windows is the only operating system I know of that's prone to viruses, spyware etc, and untold shutdown/restarts! So personally I steer well clear of anything made by Microsoft. I'm all for UNIX based OS such as Mac OS X & Linux | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/15/2007 4:27:38 PM |
As for the Vista thing, that's just a complete rip off of Mac OS X, they stole several of the features macs have had for years, such as Widgets, the Spotlight search engine, even the new chess game in Vista looks like the one OS X has had for years.
I guess that's good for the users of Mac OS X that need to use Windows Vista at work? They will be more familiar with the OS.
I have Windows XP on my laptop and I find it difficult to understand it. If Windows would be more like a Unix system, I would find it easier. I hope MS will steal more stuff in the future from Unix systems and not only applications. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/15/2007 4:41:03 PM | My favourite version of Windows is Win 2000 - simple, elegant, and not overburdened with extra applications
Give it a decent web browser, better mail client and of course a tightly buttoned-down firewall and AV and its fine...
To be fair to Windows, if you look after it properly (always use signed drivers and never connect it directly to the internet) it does what its meant to do. I think the Registry is actually a lot better than the Linux way which is to have hundreds of separate config files that must either be edited manually or manipulated through a contrived applet, because it gives a simple central location for all the settings and an easy to use registry manager (regedit.exe)
its just - as with linux - getting to know the settings.
Also the biggest annoyance for Linux is that in terms of RAM usage, desktop environments are too damn heavy. Windows 2000 can bring up a usable desktop in 64mb of RAM, equivalent KDE or Gnome builds need at least twice that, Fluxbox Enlightenment and XFCE take slightly less but are far poorer in feature terms.
I put this down to the overhead of running an X-server, Window manager and Desktop environment while Windows 2000 has all three merged into a single entity.
I hate windows as much as the next geek for its vulnerability and its unwillingness to comply to de-facto standards, but there are a handful of things microsoft got very right and nobody's come close to emulating (My Mac runs an O/S 5 years younger than Win2k and still cant do something as simple as bidirectional FTP from within a Finder window, for pete's sake.... Windows has had that since 1998.) | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/15/2007 4:50:21 PM | Oh, re Making Windows more Unixy - check out a sourceforge project called Cygwin
I last played with this when I had to administer a Unix server from a Windows box, it's a Linux emulation environment for Windows that lets you compile applications to run in its sandbox.
Last time I used it I had Xfree R4.3 (x-server) running on Windows 2000 and a full CDE desktop environment tunnelled across the network to display locally, and managed to install dozens of Linux utilities as well as the KDE desktop environment locally on Windows too
Sadly it wasn't well-enough developed to use as a shell environment... otherwise I'd have had KDE as my default desktop - instead I had to open it on top of Explorer | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 3/18/2007 2:43:41 AM | Don't be afraid of ubuntu. I have it installed on a 60GB drive in a USB enclosure. I just plug it in and boot when i want to use it. It is very user friendly.
i have used lots of distros, from dsl to RH to slack to freebsd. after trying many more, I settled on Fedora Core. Its a big download, over 3 gigs. I ran it for a few days on my new system just to check it out, then i deleted it and installed XP Pro for my games.
I really, really liked the way FC ran. I have an amd64 also, 2gb ram, and 2 300gb hard drives, sata 2. my mobo has two raid controllers and i could not believe how fast FC5 booted from a raid system. lightning comes to mind. meanwhile XP Pro on the same raid system booted 2 seconds SLOWER than my friend's XP on ONE drive.
So last week i downloaded Fedora Core 6, and thursday i ordered two more sata 2 drives to install it on. so when i want to boot XP i will enable RAID channel 2, and when I want to boot FC i will enable RAID channel 1.
just waiting on the drives, should be here monday and ill be in full geek mode.
by the way i love the new apt-get style of installing apps, instead of download, unzip, make, blah blah blah. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 4/6/2007 4:33:10 PM |
Linux is only free if your time is worthless - I've run it on and off for years (since Kernel 2.2 was hot news) and always ended up going back to proprietary systems because they took less time to set up and make things work properly
You are good at what you practice. I can get unix working faster and to my liking faster than anything else except a mac where there's really nothing to do.
To answer the original question, your system is more than adequare to run any flavour of unix.
If you want to make it faster get faster (SCSI) drives. You can get LVD (80mb/s) drives and controllers stupid cheap these days or go whole hog and get the more expensive U160. Either way SCSI will run rings around your current IDE drive. Play it safe and use Adaptec controllers. Nothing else you do to your system will make as big of a difference.
If you want yet more speed use a RAID card. IBM, Mylex and AMI are all well supported and ungodly fast.
You can never have enough RAM either. Unix gets faster and faster the more RAM you add. | |
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| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 5/9/2007 2:29:52 PM | Hi explorer900
For a newbie coming from windows to Linux I think you will be better off trying "POLinuxOS" first before trying Ubuntu.. I take both with me when setting up linux on newbie computers so they can try them both out first. But most (22 out of 24) end up staying on PCLinuxOS because it just works out of the box (apart from once) like mp3, videos and so on.
Also most window people coming over to linux are not used to using command lines to set up their computers (which is something you still need to do ofter with Ubuntu but they are working on it) With PCLinuxOS you can set all your hardware up without using the command line once, it is just click, click, click, click and so on and it is done for you.
You can try out the live linux cd with both Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS to see which one you like the best before you install it to your hard drive. and remember once you get use to using linux you can always try out other types of Linux's.
www.ubuntu.com
www.pclinuxos.com
distrowatch.com
oh yes welcome to linux and have fun | |
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rowlie
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Joined: 5/18/2006
Msg: 22 | |
| What's a decent hardware spec for a new Linux install?
Posted: 5/10/2007 1:56:29 PM | Choosing a linux distro is very much a personal matter. I like Kubuntu on my elderly w98 desktop, but have Suse 10.1 on my laptop. The main probs I find are a lack of support for some of the kit that works well on windoze. However I just regard the systems as a way of working a machine. Linux works well at running a computer, just as well as windoze actually. If you are point and click then stick with Windoze. If you enjoy computers and want to experience a learning curve then go for linux. Be assured that the change is as difficult as getting to know W in the first place. Nw you can go to the shops and buy a copy of Vista, and be totally peed of with it until in a few years it is sorted. Xp is old now? Well what most don't know is that it can be streamlined by removing the redundant junk stuff, and works very well and fast.
I got a policy a while back of not using my machine to store info. I put it all safely into the external HD.If you think of new toys a Xmas, you can break then utterly. I can screw up an OS by playing with it, and break it, but I have yet to succeed in smashing the machine that plays it all. Picking machine up and hurling it at a wall, in a moody, only gets you a bill for the plasterer to sort the damage. Linux will cost you loads in fees to test it all? NAh! Download the lot for nowt and have a play, and then build on the one you like most. Well sweet ! | |
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