What hardware works best with Fedora?/

[rpstitz]

I will soon be building a new computer, and I would like some input as to what mobo, video card, etc to purchase in order to have the least headache and good performance (all features supported, etc). I am currently using a Dell Dimension that came with WinXP, and I have had no problems with compatibility using Fedora Core 6. However, I've read about so many hardware nightmares here, that I'm leery about spending a bundle on hardware that stresses me out. Any suggestions?

[stevea]

Completely personal opinion here ....

Asus & Intel make great solid Mobos, I've had problems with MSI & also the cheap Taiwanese mobos over the years. I have absolutely nothing against AMD, but they have recently fallen behind in the CPU race, especially in performance per watt. For that reason I would select an Intel Core2Duo (e6600.e6700,q6600) - because you really want the PAE & VMX so you can run big memory & kvm. To avoid support issues I'd only use a mobo with Intel bridge *unless* you can find a solid review of the specific board with an alternate bridge running Linux.

The Intel E1000's are solid workhorse gigabit parts. I initially had a little trouble with some Marvell(sky, skge driver) parts, but ultimately that problem was caused when the kernel developers munged the drivers to accomodate an MSI mobo design error (MSI strikes again!).

Storagereview.com will tell you more than can about drive selection, but I am very pleased with the stack of Seagate SATAs I use (but all drives have issues). The Barracudas are fast, quite, but could be cooler. HItachi generally has a good rep on SATAs too, but read the specific drive reviews. Also - rather than pay a lot for a single huge drive (like the expensive 750GB & 1000GB drivers, you should seriously consider running a pair of much cheaper 320GB or 500GBs as a RAID0 and you I/O performance will roughly double (your reliability will be cut in half though; very acceptable if you do backups).

Personally I would select a SATA DVD drive. You probably should get one that handles DVD-RAM media as these are far more versatile for backup than and +-RW media. Blue-ray/DLs are still expensive - that's your call. read the reviews. I have a Lite-on SH-16A75, but I haven't surveyed that part market for ~8 month. Read the reviews.

There is no doubt that Nvidea has gone a long way toward becoming Linux-friendly, and AMD/ATI has a long way to go. Nvidea would be the only video card vendor I would consider for Linux.. I have no idea how high you want to go on a video card, but there are some passively cooled 7600GTs that are relatively cheap yet have very good performance.

For the same reason I'd strongly consider HP printers before any one else on a Linux system. Their hplip software works and it's obvious they respect the Linux users.
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Monitors - you are on your own.

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Just as an aside - it really doesn't make any difference wrt Linux, but if you want a quieter 'tower' PC you should read up at http://www.silentpcreview.com/ . In a nutshell - the less power you dissipate the less you have to worry about fans whirring, so select a power efficient CPU with speedstep. Choose a chassis that takes 120mm fans (far less noise than the 80mm). and choose a honking big heatsink with a decent fan (I've a Ninja, but there are other good ones). Memory that allow lower voltage operation makes a significant power savings.

Antec has make very good and relatively inexpensive chassis w/ 120mm fans. Sturdy, lightweight (compared to a Dell boat anchor) very reasonable ion price and the drive bay carrier designs are excellent. Not flashy tho'. . silentPC has a list but see the Antec sonata,

[pdusen]

There is no doubt that Nvidea has gone a long way toward becoming Linux-friendly, and AMD/ATI has a long way to go. Nvidea would be the only video card vendor I would consider for Linux..
For the moment. Personal opinion.

[rpstitz]

Thanks, Stevea, that's just the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I personally like ASUS over all other mobos, and NVidia over ATI (although I'm using a Radeon, but only because it kinda fell into my lap). Why use SCSI CD drive? Is it just a speed thing, or what? Also, does anyone have an opinion (or better yet, experience) about the dual-processor ASUS mobo that uses two AMD FX processors? It seems like a bit of overkill, but it sure would provide some enormous bragging opportunities :D