I am a great believer in Free/Open Software, so for this machine I’d really like to have it be based on GNU/Linux. The goals are :

- support any programming I want to do
- support media, movie watching, multiple screens etc
- play nice with my wireless network and windows machines
- be relative easy to setup new software

Here’s some of the trials I experienced in a couple of nights of hair tearing with various Linux distributions :

Ubuntu LiveCD
Boots up ok.
Only works with my old NVidia GeForce
GNome works good
Couldn’t install NVidia 6629 drivers
Couldn’t get samba to do anything (maybe not supported in LiveCD kernel?)
– smbtree works great on my laptop with debian

Ubuntu Install CD
Booted fine
Hung during install, but indicated a bad CD.

Debian
The Debian install images I found didn’t support SATA, so I was screwed on that. I do like Debian, and have it setup on a laptop using Knoppix, but they need to update the install images.

Mandrake 10.1
Mandrake 10.1 booted but failed in the install at the detecting my SATA drive. I think this is pretty common in 10.1.
– Mandrake 9.2 apparently is fine in this situation

So with all those problems, and I can’t be that unusual in having these kinds of problems, you’d think most people would be scarred for life, and not able to look at a Linux installation again… enter …

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo GNU/Linux is a ‘from-source’ distribution. The install CD includes a *very* slick and polished boot up, a comprehensive kernel build that seems to detect everything (except prism wireless cards – doh) and the best documentation of any of the GNU/Linux’s.

It took a couple of evenings of doc reading, but I finally had a bootable kernel, stable OS and a very basic gnome installation running.

Here’s the main points I had problems with when I built the PC.

- forgot the IO connectors backplate
- forgot (once) to plug power supply into graphics card
- forgot the 4-way block connector to the motherboard
- had the bios misconfigured (IDE off – well I have SATA)
- had a hard time getting CDs to boot (IDE, didn’t burn as ISO etc etc)
- had a really hard time with the cabling from the front panel to main board

It took a couple of nights to get all the bugs ironed out, but it’s running like a champ now on the default settings.

Linux reports ~4900 bogoMips, not sure if that is any good or not. I expect to get round to trying to optimise the memory settings etc., once I have my OS setup stable and working.

Working Hard … Playing Hard

Just built (finally) a new computer. Here’s the component list :

MSI Neo2 F 939 motherboard
Athlon64 3500+ processor
1Gig Corsair RAM (with flashing LEDs)
Chempro Gaming Shark 2 Case
500 W PSU with lights
Dual layer DVD burner
MSI Nvidia GT6600 graphics card
SATA WD Raptor 73 Gig hard drive
Apple USB keyboard

All the bits as listed total about $1500, and were delivered in about 8 days from www.newegg.com. I did get an extra dvd burner, so the order wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t too bad.

The display is a Sharp 17″ flat panel which were on offer for $249 after rebate from the local Fry’s on I45.