Since most hw-vendors doesn't officially support linux, I have done quite a bit of research to ensure that I will be able to meet these requirements and that everything will work.
The configurations considered are all Dell computers, for which i have gotten special offers for through my employer. Thus the details of the specifications are fixed to 4 different setups. The models able to meed the requirements above were Dell Dimension 8400 and Dell Dimension XPS. Summarised, the differences between these two systems were:
| XPS | 8400 |
|---|---|
| 3.6 GHz CPU, 2GB Ram, 500 GB HDD | 3.4GHx CPU, 1GB Ram, 340GB HDD |
| ATI Radeon X800PRO | nVidia GeForce 6800 |
| almost twice the price of 8400 |
ATI-cards seems to be less supported in linux, and in my opinion the extra power doesn't really justify the price. In general, the last inch up to the high-end system is usually not worth it...
Ok, so the make and model is chosen. This was indeed a very good offer, so there is no doubt I get a lot for my money. The next question is whether this will work with linux. The table below summarise my findings.
| Component | Type | Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Prosessor | IntelŪ PentiumŪ 4 Prosessor 550 med HT teknologi (3.4GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB cache) | I don't expect any trouble with this. Intel are good at compatibility with themselves, and the gcc-people are good at supporting different CPUs. |
| Chipset | IntelŪ 925X Express | There are 3 issues which might arise with this board that I can imagine:
|
| RAM | 1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 400Mhz (2x512MB) (4 DIMM slots, maks 4096MB) | Probably ok (?) |
| Harddisk | 320GB SATA Harddisk RAID 0 Stripe 2x160GB, 7.200RPM | As with USB, SATA-support in linux seems to be immature, but I'm not afraid of the cutting edge. RAID is just a matter of configuration, and this is not that important, if I can't get it to work, I'll do without. |
| Floppy | 1.44 Floppy | |
| Soundcard | Creative Soundblaster Audigy II (PCI) | A fairly high-end soundcard there. I don't think it will matter much to my ears. If there is no proper linux-support, I suppose I could always get it working as a SoundBlaster-16... |
| GFX Card | 256MB PCI Express nVidia Geforce 6800 DVI/TV OUT | Now, for running Doom with any real framerate, it seems Radeon X800 or GeForce 6800. Reports on the net seems to indicate that with some luck you can get the Radeon working, but GeForce is a safer bet. |
| DVD burner | 16X DVD+/-RW | |
| DVD-ROM | 16X | |
| NW-card | Integrated Gigabit Networking | I can't imagine this not being compatible with something linux supports. In my experience, networking in linux is never any problem. |
| RAID controller | Integrert med IntelŪ Matrix Storage teknologi | Now, this is something to think about.
Intel
are pointing to a driver
supporting this. This is a path for linux 2.4, but support is
apparently included in 2.6. I have seen reports indicating that the
performance might not be as good as with original intel (windows)
drivers. If everything fails, I hope I can still use the disks
without RAID. Music and video are quite disk-intensive applications,
but modern disks should have no problem reading and writing two
separate videostreams anyway. This issue can be devided in 3:
|
| Modem | 56k analogt data/fax (PCI) | This is something I would remove if I had the option to tailor the configuration... |
| Firewire | IEEE1394 on the sound-card | This is really not important to me, but atleast there is a driver available. |
| Keyboard/Mouse | Dell 105-taster / Dell Two-Button Wheel Optical. | |
| Slots | 3 PCI, 1 PCI-E 1X, 1 PCI-E 16X | |
| Chassis | 2 external 5.25' bays, 2 external 3.5' bays, 2 internal 3,5' bays | Most of these are probably used already for the two disks, two dvd-players and the floppy |
| Ports | 1 parallell, 1 serial, 2 PS/2 | If I can't get a printer to work over USB, atleast I have parallell as a backup |
| USB | 8, USB 2.0 | USB probably works? |
I feel on thin ice with this one, a Canon Canoscan 8400, but it was an add-on to the same good offer, so I'm taking my chances... There is scanner-support in the linux usb-driver.
For myth-tv to be useful I also need a TV-tuner-card. These come with or without mpeg2-encoding in hardware. And although this CPU is probably more than powerful enough for encoding and decoding an mpeg-stream at once, it would be nice to be able to use the computer while recording without risking loosing any video.
There seems to be to recommended alternatives here: Hauppauge WinTv-350 or 250. 250 is cheaper, but it seems to be unavailable, replaced by a new card, 150. However, the latter doesn't have any linux-support yet, and this might take a while, as they apparently use completely different chips in this one. That means I have to go all the way and get the 350. The nice thing about this is that it also has TV-out, which means I can effectively connect 3 screens (tv, monitor, and in the future: a projector), and it has an FM radio-tuner.
First question, which distribution? Atleast I'm considering:
For a mostly-single-user computer, there is no need for the many different partitions one usually configures on a unix-server. However, some will be needed. The setup below is inspired by this recomendation.
| Step | Details |
|---|---|
| Linux boot-medium | With any luck, this can be done from an USB-memory-stick.
Things I need to figure out:
|
| Get RAID working |
|
| Partition and install | Special care has to be taken to cater for
dual-boot between windows and linux. Assuming raid
is working, the partitioning and installation-process
will be as described below. More details
here
|
| video-drivers | nVidia drivers available here |
| sound-drivers | Audigy on Linux |
| try doom | |
| gimp | |
| printer | |
| scanner | |
| tv-tuner/mythtv | |
| tv-out |
After I get the system in-house (end of february) and start playing with it, I will post my experiences here.