Quote:
Originally Posted by shep
Future Proofing is a fine goal but in practice hard to accomplish. I'm saying that as I look at a box of Socket A CPU's, AGP video cards and pc133 memory.
The manufacturers of desktop hardware keep changing it. I just helped a neighbor who bought a new HP/Compaq system put a wireless card in it. It only had a PCI-e and a PCi -e16 slot. My old pci wireless cards are looking at future extinction.
Video drivers are also a current issue as most of the mainline cards (intel, amd/radeon)
are implementing KMS which at this time is only available in Linux. The BSD's
run older video drivers or heavily patched video drivers. I read someplace that
to get the new intel video driver to work in OpenBSD it took 4000 lines of additional code.
Another suggestion is that best future proofing is to pick a main line operating system and learn it. If you learn it you will be able to make it what you want. Judge the OS by the documentation, the forums and how security is handled
Mint and PC-PSC basically choose applications for you and the Mint version I saw
looked like a mish-mash of Gnome and KDE applications. PC-BSD is largely KDE although you can add gnome or xfce. I personally don't like the idea of having a
lot of bloat on a system (more to go wrong, more places for security holes, more
overhead maintaining daemons that you may not even use).
There are also 2 Slackware derivatives that have a philosophy of one task, one application. Zenwalk and Salix are extremely simple installs and are available
with various desktops (KDE, Gnome, Xfce4, openbox, fluxbox).
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as I've no plan to constantly taxi full-size tower to and from custom build shop every few years, or waste couple thousand dollars on new rig every five years. This one I'm designing will be it, for better or worse...so I'd best be dang sure to do it right the first time! Ever think the manufacturers "keep changing it" because the 'latest&greatest&biggest&best' addicts keep buying into it? I've been using the same crappy Dell PC at library for past two years, and if a clone of it is all I could afford, I'd be satisfied. As is, I've discovered local custom-build shop that is okay with me supplying the components. This allows me two advantages. First I can buy parts one at a time, which gives me greater purchase power;second, I can pick optimal hardware to satisfy each OS.
What little I understand about KMS, pre-R600 Ati Radeon graphic cards work just as well with
both Linux & PC-BSD...if true, I see no reason for "mainline cards".
Anyway, my software research concluded last year. Recommendations from Linux forums was that for newbie like me the best choices was PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint 7, Xandros 4, or Ultimate Edition 2.2. I studied each and choose Linux Mint 7, as having the most complete applications, easiest to learn, and having best instructional books...same reason I choose PC-BSD. XP Pro for reason already stated in previous post. I'm now focused on hardware, as I want to have all components bought and delivered to shop at least before end of year...a lot sooner even better! I'm looking for suggestions of motherboards/chipsets, CPUs, graphic cards/TV tuners, sound cards, NICs, routers /w NAT/SPI,& printers (both B&W laser and color inkjet), that are
known compatible with all three operating systems.