On 2/7/06, Ron Dean <rvdean(a)ihug.co.nz> wrote:
I am considering buying a new bare bones system but wish to make sure it works. I use it mostly for Photo editing with the Gimp and some other graphics programs. Would an on board graphics or an additional Video card be a good idea. I was also considering getting 1gig ram. I wanted it to be a Linux only box. Also should I choose a 64bit system.
Ian McDonald wrote My advice would be to go with a cheap graphics card from Nvidia as they are a little bit better supported. The other alternative is to go with on board but make sure it has a PCI Express slot available so that you can add a graphics card in if not quite good enough.
Definitely would recommend 1 G RAM with it being so cheap at the moment.
64 bit? I would buy one for future proofing as no real price penatly but wouldn't install 64 bit Linux just yet. The reason being is that 64 bit Linux actually uses more memory and you only really get advantages if using more than 2 or 3 G of RAM or some very specialised software. Also things like Macromedia Flash do not yet work for 64 bit Linux.
You might consider asking a vendor for right of return if it doesn't run Linux but should be OK. Biggest problem is likely to be modems if you use an ADSL one (as opposed to an ADSL router), internal PCI modems for telephones or wireless cards. There has been talk of some problems with newer ATI graphics cards but I don't know how real that is.
Looking on the net there seems to be some problems with the SATA harddrives and Ubuntu Which would you recommend SATA or PATA