Best parts for a linux PC?

[KoolDrew]

I hear a lot about hardware compatbility when it comes to linux. I hear a few linux users here say bad things about NF4 chipsets and ATI cards because of this. So what parts are best to get for a linux AMD system? Anyparticular chipsets I should look for etc.?

 

[Zelmo3]

Wow, I was just looking at the old standby, the Linux Hardware How-To at linux.org, and it's way out of date. Even when it was current it wasn't very informative.

Check Linux-compatible. They list both hardware and software.

In general, from my experience and what I've heard from others:
Matrox video cards are great for 2D.
Nvidia is the best choice for 3D.
ATI should be avoided.
Via motherboard chipsets are said to work best.
N-Force2 motherboards have worked perfectly for me.
SoundBlaster is probably the best supported brand of sound card.
Wireless networking is best with Prizm chipsets and one or two others that someone else knows better than I do, but most any chipset can be made to work using ndiswrapper.
All hard drive interfaces are well supported, but some of the cheaper interface cards (such as SATA RAID controllers) aren't. Plug all your drives into your mobo if you can, and you'll have no trouble.

Check the link for anything specific, like if you want to see if your favorite doohickey works well.

 

[heedoyiu]

yah my abit nforce two worked fine my 6800 though had some probs and my gay mouse didnt work but it was a cheap pos so i stole my buddies microsoft mouse

 

[n0cmonkey]

VIA, AMD, or Intel chipsets.
wireless: Get RALink stuff, support Taiwan.
NIC: Sysconnect is the top of the line, Intel just isn't playing nice.
Avoid Adaptec, praise LSI.
ATI will work just fine, as long as you don't want hardware accelerated 3d on newer cards.

 

[daniel49]

Im running fedora 3 with a Radeon 9200 (ATI) no problems, only gives you 3 resolutions to choose from but had no problem setting it up.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Avoid Adaptec, praise LSI.

Praise LSI for dropping support of their older megaraid cards?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Avoid Adaptec, praise LSI.

Praise LSI for dropping support of thier older megaraid cards?

Praise LSI for support F/OSS. What cards aren't supported by the Linux kernel?

 

[sourceninja]

My system works fine in linux (fedora, ubuntu, gentoo) and is nf4.

Your only realy concerns are wireless cards and video cards in terms of compatiblity. For the most part, get an nvidia video card and you are fine. As for wireless, I dont use wireless so I can't really be of help.

My current linux box is

AMD64 3500
DFI Ultra-D
1 gig of ram
nvidia 6800 GT 256 meg
nec dual layer dvd burner
300 gig SATA hard drive

I've used a few variants of linux trying to find the best distro 64bit linux. But I've also installed 32 bit gentoo, ubuntu, and fedora just to see how it works, and everything has worked fine for me. I also use Cedega for gaming, and after installing the nvidia drivers everything works great.

 

[drag]

One option is to go Intel. Their newer motherboards have decent 3d performing onboard video cards that are supported by DRI, but I can't vouch for their quality being that I don't own one.

Otherwise if your going for AMD64 go with a Via or AMD-based motherboard from a good manufacturer. Don't get suckered in by fancy overclocking features or any onboard raid devices. Stuff like that is worthless and for Raid the Linux software raid is faster if you realy want that stuff, which generally you shouldn't.

For care-free audio the best card that I can think of is a emu10k1-style card. Creative soundblaster, or Audigy (not Audigy LS!), Audigy 2, etc cards are fairly well supported and inexpensive. They support hardware mixing which is a very nice feature over onboard sound systems. Their drivers can cause issues with Windows, but on Linux they are dead stable. (open source drivers and all that.)

For video cards the most powerfull one that you can get working by default is ATI 9200 series. Nothing newer, no 9250 or anything. Only 9200 and older. Otherwise avoid ATI products like the plague. Onboard video Via stuff is rare and it sucks anyways. Support for intel GMA should be good, but it's relatively new so not many people are using it. (the i915 drivers btw)

If you need a very powerfull video card then Nvidia is your only choice. They require that you go out and download special propriatory drivers to get full functioning. Still worlds above ATI in terms of stability and performance for their propriatory drivers. The Nvidia are nice drivers, even though they suck for being close. If anything can cause instability they will since they are designed in a completely seperate proccess from the rest of the OS.

This guy has pretty accurate advice:
http://cr.yp.to/hardware/advice.html

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Praise LSI for support F/OSS. What cards aren't supported by the Linux kernel?

From https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/ent...se/RHEL-4-Manual/release-notes/as-x86/

* Dell PERC (dual-channel fast/wide SCSI) RAID controller
* Dell PERC2/SC (single-channel Ultra SCSI) RAID controller
* Dell PERC2/DC (dual-channel Ultra SCSI) RAID controller
* Dell CERC (four-channel ATA/100) RAID controller
* MegaRAID 428
* MegaRAID 466
* MegaRAID Express 500
* HP NetRAID 3Si and 1M

Both Dell and LSI Logic have indicated that they no longer support these models in the 2.6 kernel. As a result, these adapters are not supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.