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Sunday, April 8, 2007

Easter afternoon computer rambling

My birthday is coming up (in about a little over a month) and I am already planning what I want to get. In the past, my parents have always tried to get me things that I don't care for that much. This year, I am going to push for a computer, which is no surprise to them as I have been trying to put one together. I will likely do a I'll-pay-for-half sort of deal with my parents so that I can get it.

I have what I want in mind already. I thought of putting it together myself, but finding (and knowing) parts that work together is a bit much for me. Instead, I am going to buy it from Dell because they are far cheaper, and they have what I want.

I am looking for a computer that has a 64-bit processor, preferably from AMD, and at least 1GB of RAM. Hard drives are not an issue for me, so most any size will do. Dell by default, offers a decent sound card, which I will team up with some new speakers. Then, I am going crazy on the monitor:
[Image: The monitor I want]
[Image: Relative scaling of the monitor to what I currently use]The monitor is about 35% larger in screen area than the one that my family uses, and is a 22" wide-screen. I made the image at right to show about how the two compare. This monitor will last me, and then when I go to college, I might get another depending on how things fare with this one.

Since the money will be burnt on Vista, by no option, I might install it to use for a while, just to review it. More likely, I will jump right in and install Fedora Core 6, which I have already tried on the LiveCDs. Before I buy, I am going to run all of this by my brother, who works with computers running FC5 to make sure that the computer I will be buying will be Linux-capable. I just need to hold out a little bit longer.

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3:12 PM | Posted by mike | 3 comments posted below

Comments:

Check out system76.com. All of their computers come with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed. Hopefully they'll start shipping with 7.04 when it's released in a few weeks.
By Blogger Mike, at 4/08/2007 05:44:00 PM
I have looked through the computers at System76, and to me, it isn't quite what I want, and the price is a tad high for me.

I'll look into Ubuntu (if they have a LiveCD), but the reason I choose Fedora is that I have already played around with it, and my brother works with it, so there's an extra level of support. I still have a month to think about it.
By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4/08/2007 06:08:00 PM
If you've ever used Debian, you'll probably like Ubuntu since it's based on Debian and uses their package manager which I've always preferred to RPM. Right now I'm installing the newly released Debian Etch under VMware on my MacBook Pro.

There are also other companies that sell systems with Linux pre-installed, or you could buy a bare system without an OS. I got my Linux box custom built from CPU solutions with a Biostar motherboard, AMD Duron 1.6GHz, 120GB drive (later expanded to two 320GB RAID 1), Radeon 7000 (which sucks for Linux) and no OS. I just don't want to buy a copy of Windows on general principles.

A friend and I developed XpressLinux (www.xpresslinux.com), which is Ubuntu with Wine and some other software pre-installed to make it more compatible with Windows and more compatible with different multimedia formats. Other than Wine, most of the other stuff won't really be needed with Feisty, since it automatically installs codecs for different media formats as needed.
By Blogger Mike, at 4/08/2007 08:21:00 PM
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