On Lu, 20 feb 12, 14:19:36, Sian Mountbatten wrote: > My desktop computer is nearly 7 years old and I'm thinking that a > new computer using some of the hardware improvements would be a good > thing. > > So I'm going to ask my friendly computer consultant, who is only > downstairs from me, to build me a computer with hardware 3d > acceleration, solid-state drive, 8Gb RAM. What else should I ask for > and what works with Linux? He's going to give me a list of the > hardware he is going to install, so I can check Linux compatibility. > Although I am not a gamer, I would like to run tuxracer which really > needs 3d acceleration to work. Any suggestions will be welcome.
First decision: proprietary drivers or not For proprietary I'd chose nVidia cards over ATI anytime. While I can't comment on the driver itself, the packaging for nvidia over fglrx in Debian is superior (several generations supported, pre-built modules for stable, backports, responsive maintainers, etc.). If you definitely don't want to use proprietary drivers you can also consider Intel cards (or even built-in), since I expect the performance of either nVidia or ATI cards with the free drivers to be comparable with Intel. OTOH I doubt tuxracer has very high 3d performance requirements. > Keyboard: for many years now, I have used a keyboard which is not > membrane-based. It has individual key switches, is properly dished > and is a joy to use. No keyboard click, but I don't use that anyway. > The keyboard is connected to the PS/2 socket. Would a wireless > keyboard do as good a job? I suppose it would probably be USB, but I > shall listen to advice on that. The keyboard is an essential > peripheral and I am willing to spend money on a good keyboard. Maybe > I should keep the keyboard I am using. It's not overly clean, but I > can live with it. Make sure the new mainboard even has a PS/2 interface, otherwise you'll have to use USB adapters (which can cause problems sometimes). Kind regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
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