Slashdot Mirror
System of the Year, Linux Style
Bob the Blob writes "LinuxHardware has put together a wonderful article that gathers up all of the top hardware into the ultimate Linux system from 2001. In the article, there is a review of the hardware from 2001 that discusses what we've seen and why the parts were chosen. To make you drool, think Athlon XP with GeForce 3 Ti500 with the stability of Linux." Worth noting that this
machine is of course now at least 10 days obsolete ;)
w00t w00t! F1rst P0st!
...
first i can't use caps. then i click too quickly. both times i lose my comment.
neat feature! you dumbshits know if there was a "feature" like this on a microsoft site you would rip into it
Slashdot posts advertisements as news.
Still pretty impressed with what it does on my 70MHz SparcIPX (it's got a sped up processor ;)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
SmOKE CRacK!#@!
Now i can take this baddass linux box and reboot to windows to play games even faster!
Now what exactly are you going to run on Linux that will take advantage of the Geforce 3?
Blazing fast command line with realtime pixel shading? C'mon people. Get real.
If you even suggest rendering software, I'll tell you this: I run everything from Maya 4, to 3DS Max R4 and even Bryce, and the rendering times on my Geforce 3 aren't much different from those of my old TNT 2 Ultra.
Fix the other bottlenecks in the system before you start playing with the video cards.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
Let's all convince our governments that owning such a machine is vital for scientific progress (finding aliens, cracking rc5 keys, etc) and get them to sponsor such a box to each and every citizen!
Little Eddie Gentry was a misunderstood teen. At age six, his parents divorced in a messy court battle. His mother ended up winning 95% custody due to his father's "questionable" habits and employments, all of which centered around Slashdot and the Open Source community.
By the time Eddie was 15, he had quite a few hobbies but no real friends. Eddie spent most of his time coding on a new system called "Linux" and posting informative and interesting comments on Slashdot. Living in his mother's basement, Eddie stayed up all night learning new tips and tricks, desperately trying to become 1337 in a world in which he felt negelected.
Eddie's mother had been working two jobs since he could remember, and now that Eddie was about to start driving, she was going to look for another and had also been suggesting to Eddie that he start perusing the want-ads for a job for himself when he got his license. Naturally this left Eddie's mother with little time for Eddie; she rarely even dated for all she had time for was work, work, paying bills, and keeping up their two-bedroom condo. Without a male rold-model, Eddie was socially and personally confused and so felt more comfortable shirking the world and staying in his dark, musty basement most of the time.
Months after Eddie got his license, he grew even more disenchanted with the world. Thinking his license would lead to a more active social life, Eddie was disappointed when no girls were interested in the '85 maroon Dodge Omni he drove around; his homemade MP3 player he installed in his car didn't impress any of the guys in school either. The great gas mileage was no consolation. He grew more depressed and his grades slipped. The world was becoming dark in little Eddie Gentry's eyes. He sank into his Linux programming and Slashdotting more and more until he was ignoring his homework completely and regularly came to work (at a QuikTrip gas station) 20 or 30 minutes late just so he could post a few extra comments here or there on Slashdot.
Eddie was now 16 years old and knew only the feeling of the cold, damp basement and and hard work at the nearby QuikTrip; he never had felt the warmth of a woman's touch or the firm hug of a caring father. He'd never felt the burst of adrenaline the goalie feels in football when he sees the other team heading towards him; he'd never felt the teasing itch of a healing sunburn on his back. And at 16, Eddie was beginning to grow bitter and feel cheated by the lack of experience he had in life. He damned his father for being a sadistic asshole towards him as a baby, and he blamed his mother for worrying too much about him and the bills she always seemed to be talking about. He also blamed himself, though he didn't know why. And it showed in his Slashdot posts...
After several months spent in a non-stop downward spiral, Eddie gave up on real life and began writing CmdrTaco in desperation and loneliness. He talked about his life, the people he thought were cool, and also quietly looked for approval from Rob Malda. What a poor thing to have attempted:
After getting similar responses from the other Slashdot editors, and realizing no one real or electronic would ever care about him, Eddie's resolve steeled. Unfortunantly, it was with a poor solution to his problems that he began planning for. But for the first time in his short life, Eddie felt the weight of the world ascend from his shoulders. He smiled for the first time in a long time, and people noticed. Especially Marie Swanson, a schoolmate and neighbor. Eddie noticed little and cared less, however, because his plan was so clever and would solve so many problems. He was proud of himself for the first time ever and it was all going to happen soon. Very soon.
It was April 19, 2002 when Eddie pulled into the gravel driveway late at night. Killing th lights, Eddie grabbed the brown paper bag in the driver's seat and sashed it under his black trenchcoat. He attempted to slide by his mother but she halted him, holding his hands in hers. She told him she was happy for him and that she was relieved hat he was "coming out of his shell." Eddie weakly smiled and told his mom things were hard sometimes. If only she knew. Eddie told her he'd be back up for dinner and quickly ran to his Linux workstation in the corner of the basement, and launched Mozilla 0.9.7.
12 minutes later, Mozilla and Slashdot were finished loading, and Eddie was looking for the latest story. Perfect! This new one, regarding more VA Linux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware downsizing, was brand new and had no comments yet... With bated breath and sweaty palms, Eddie clocked the links and started typing his message into the text field. He trembled and shook as he typed, his fingers a blue on the keyboard. The intensity in his eyes was matched only by the emptiness behind them.
It had been an hour since Eddie came home and as usual, not a peep was heard from the basement. Eddie's mother stared at the sink, quietly going over the ingredients for tonight's dinner, Eddie's favorite dish: hot-dog and bean casserole covered in melted American cheese. She wanted to make something special for her little boy. She jumped as she was brought out of her trance by the phone ringing. She waited, thinking Eddie would pick it up, but as he sometimes wore headphones and listened to his music very loudly, she picked it up herself on the thrid ring. It was Marie Swanson, the neighbor girl
"Is Eddie there?" came the timid voice on the other end. Eddie's mom said she'd get Eddie, but first she asked if she could tell him what it was regarding-- Eddie was often stubborn about coming to the phone sometimes.
"I just wanted to ask Eddie if he'd like to join me and Lisa and her cousin Mike at the movies with us tonight. Tell him he can call me back later if he's busy, we didn't want to go until the seven-o-clock show anyway." With that, Eddie's mom was on her way down the stairs and calling Eddie's name. No reply came, so she assumed that this would be another round of turning the sound down on his stereo to get his attention. She couldn't have been wronger. What met her eyes was the worst site a mother could ever hope to see in her life. Even though he could have been asleep, she knew better.
Eddie was laying slumped over with his head restng on the keyboard, one arm under his head and the other, his left, hanging limply straight down. Spittle was slowly drying on his lower lip, and his eyes bulged out of his head in a ghastly manner. His skin was a sick light blue-purple color, which was obscured by the thick, clear plastic bag taped firmly around his neck. Attached to the bag by some tape was some fishtank air-pumo tubing, which at its other end was connected to yet another bag containing some misty substance. The basement smelled like almonds.
Eddie was dead, a victim of himself.
The shrieks and cries heard that night were never forgotten by any of the neighbors. Eddie's mother's life would never be the same, and the school was closed in a day of mourning. Counseling was given freely all day for the next week as well, and Eddie's mother spoke at a memorial service for the school. Things were pretty straight forward, and everyone-- especially Eddie's mom-- went straight into dealing with the loss, nearly impossible as that is.
What Eddie's mother always assumed was that Eddie was angst-ridden and unhappy and had no healthy way to express this to anyone, and she blamed herself for this. Though this was genericaly true, Eddie's mother had missed something that night in her blind anguish. Had she looked a little closer at the computer her son lay dead in front of, she would have seen something very telling that could have given her more depth of understanding. Alas, she didn't, even though all it would have taken was a single click of the "Back" button. As it was, when they removed the computer to examination, there was evidence of one final attempt Eddie made to communicate his feelings to someone, somewhere. Like all of Eddie's other attempts in life, however, his attempt failed miserable.
Who knows, maybe Eddie would have waited just long enough for his mother to have made it downstairs? What a sad, frustrating life Eddie ended that night.
all that power and nothing to use it on. why bother?
It seems like a 'Linux System of the Year' ought to fully embody the Linux spirit, which nvidia does not. I'd much rather see a Radeon in there.
nvidia cards are severely limited if you're not willing to run the closed-source drivers. nvidia still won't share all of the information about their cards needed for activating DVI-D and other parts of the display output hardware, as well as pieces of the rendering hardware.
Admittedly, nvidia has done a decent job of keeping the closed-source drivers up to date for 98% of the users out there, but simple things like using an nvidia card as your secondary/tertiary display can still lock your system up, and there's not much you can realistically do to fix that without the source.
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w00t!!!111!
finally!
(20 second mandatory post cooling-off period be damned!)
12 comments and already slashdotted.
I guess their hardware is not quite up to par.
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
That's a very nice system, and I can't help but drool. With the Raw Coolness factor of Linux, this machine must SCREAM. Of course, install Windows XP on it and watch it just barely outperform a cranky 286 with the turbo button un-depressed.
Beef! Beef! Beef!
the latest and greatest linux machine is still based on 5 year old hardware because drivers don't exist for nything newer.
Use Windows XP instead...that supports all the latest hardware.
Personally, I wouldn't have the need for a system like this under Linux unless I planned on running a server and maybe do some 3d modeling. The main uses for such powerful hardware are servers and games. Only one of those Linux does well.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If this was an MS exploit, we'd have 3 stories and 1000+ anti-MS "here we go again" comments already.
Hey,
To make you drool, think Athlon XP with GeForce 3 Ti500 with the stability of Linux.
That will be useful! The $300 graphics card will be ideal for all the 3D-intensive games that are only availiable for Windows!
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
--tif
why bother with a gf3 on linux? might as well put some crap card on there. not enough games to be worth your time. Only if you dual boot windows.
I have basically the same system, with a ti200 instead of the 500, and it does infact, rock.
First of all, the NVidia drivers aren't free. Secondly they are as unstable as a alpha of win95.
All this and still under 140 decibels.
You don't get the source to those either...
I don't get it. I've seen "dream" systems before, but what's the tie in with Linux? I mean, a fast system is a fast system. Who cares what OS you're running?
Oh wait. I see. This is the best system you can get with peripherals that have Linux drivers. Well, that narrows it down a bit.
Anyone use these things? If you get a hardon for those window kits and want to show off these are fine. If you actually want to cool/overclock these are POS. Did they get paid by thermaltake to use all their products I mean listen to this, "Other supplies we'd like to mention all come from one company, Thermaltake. Thermaltake is a total cooling solutions company and provide the best products for many of those extra cooling jobs." WTF? For anyone interested in some real cooling for about 20 bucks more and peice of mind the damn fan won't die check out this. I have no comment on the memory coolers as they give a whole whopping 1 degree celsius of difference in tests I've seen. Were these people stunned stupid into liking shiny impractical things?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Very impressive! Go Scarlet Knights.
I only have one question:
How is something the ultimate Linux system, and not the ultimate AnyOS system?
Now I know this is a troll, but jesus, people! Writing an article and slapping "Linux" on it to make a slashdot article? Its pretty pathetic!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
NVidia is worst choice for Linux. You should try Voodoo, Matrox or ATI. If you choose NVidia you can't use Xv/OpenGL or you must use closed source module!
And if you don't need Xv/OpenGL - why the hell you want spend so much money to Geforce??? Or is it just system for "dual boot" ? So don't call it best for Linux!
Who the f*** cares about the wooh ahhh *linux
system? Talk about BSD will you?
was hidden under strong 1 BIT ENCRYPTION! It is written in GPL (not the licence, the GNU PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE)
Its called GNU Penis and it is a free program to control your penis, just type in
/f4/4t5/ 54954
/dev /. -++
$ mknod -p penis
to create a symbolic connection to your penis through the dev system! (dick, willy and cock work too)
UPDATE
I found a 360k floppy disk with "linux 0.01" on it, i did the following commands to compile "gpenis"
$ rdr94 -k -39 -gn
$ g3el 458 -495
$ push -aux -2 -dev of=/dev/penis
I tried
$ gpenis -urinate
I pissed my self! Ill find out about the other commands soon!
This system would have been a lot better if they ditched the Athlon XP and replaced it with a dual Athlon MP system. Single processor boxes are just don't scale as well. Get one application that has bad thread handling and it can bring your computer to a crawl. But a dual will usually give you enough power to pull outta it.
I know I'll get flamed for this, so I'm going AC. ;)
What's the point of a Linux-based powerhouse with a GF3 Ti500? I mean, you have what, 5 games to choose from? If I'm going to spend that much money on a video card, I'm certainly not going to be using it under Linux anywhere near its full potential. I'd rather stick it in my Win2k box and play some sweet Wolfenstein or Medal Of Honor.
Great system and all, but frankly, I don't need that much gaming power under the "stability" of Linux.
Has anyone else here had their xserver lockup with the 23.13 drivers from nvidia. For me this happens pretty much every time after about 10 minutes in 3d mode. I know at least some people are having the same problems from different message boards. How many other people here have had this problem?
to bad they didn't use the box to host their site.
/.'d in 2 minutes....
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
..
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I guess they weren't running this "powerhouse" as there web server.
Doesn't speak to well for a web site that does articles on high performance linux hardware, or so it says.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Then that explains this story. He advertised on /. to get some work :)
Too slashdotted to see the damn thing anyway.
Since I am not much of a hardware guy, I'd be more interested in questions like where is it essential to spend a little money. For example, if one only wants reasonable performace and would be developing only for hobby and self-education, is one of the cheap Celeron systems OK or will it bite me in the ass down the line that I don't have a Pentium? And if I would also need to boot Windows for work related stuff, does that change my minimum hardware requirements?
Anybody have any links or advice?
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
Anyone got a mirror for this article so I can read it?
:)
You'd figure a site like http://www.linuxhardware.org would be able to handle lots of traffic.
-Dan
I bet KDE and GNOME still run like shit on it.
Clearly this system is in no way "ultimate" in terms of price/performance, reliability, or open-ness of software and hardware.
It would be educational to see what system LinuxHardware could come up with with a $1000 spending cap, and a requirement that it reach a 60-day uptime under constant use.
There must be at least one more meaning for OS which you could fit in the same paragraph, or at least another two letter acronym ;)
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
I use free-as-in-speech software because I have been burnt too many times by closed source software which changes in ways I don't want, or doesn't change in ways I do want, or goes out of business, or changes its licensing model, or doesn't keep up with the times and won't work with newer software. Etc etc etc.
I WILL NOT be burned by proprietary software again if I can help it!
As a semi-aside, my original disgust for Microsoft was the patronizing "we know what you want" attitude of their software. Then of course there was the bugginess of it. I also grew to loathe their business non-ethics. A few years ago, a wonderful job went away when some vulture capitalists would not fund a friend's startup "because M$ would dup the effort and we wouldn't get our money back". And since then M$ has compounded all reasons for disgust. However, all this disgust for M$ is not why I use free source software; it's because I don't want to ever again be trapped in proprietary software over which I have no control.
Infuriate left and right
I think your framerate is gonna be a hell of alot faster on the Geforce3 if that's all your concerned about. Also RTCW supports compressed textures (read: detail), Trueform, vertex shading, hardware t&l, etc. The Geforce3 is nice but realistically, not many games really cater to it yet.
Besides, does it matter how old games are? It's the popularity. Look at how old Half Life is, and it still rocks and has a huge following. Until something comes along to kick it's ass and be the 'next big thing', those games are still used as the mark of quality. Games like Max Payne are great for awhile but if you can't keep playing it online, people forget about it.
So there you have it. The most popular FPS games are available on linux or can be run under wine/winex. Dispel the myth, drown the FUD.
of the 'Ultimate Linux' machines 'crash' alot because of a conflict with the soundcard?
SB Live! if I remember right.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
What the heck are you talking about?! NVidia provides full source code for their linux drivers. Just download them from the driver page!
They are just not GNU licensed. So I guess we can't upgrade them ourselves. Big friggin deal, I'd rather the HW manufaturer did that anyway. The Kernel hackers can still see what's going on in the code, for debugging purposes.
This is a big NON-ISSUE.
An open-source BIOS would be helpful, because often there are bugs in the BIOS that must be worked around (Linux contains several workarounds for BIOS bugs). But since the BIOS can usually be bypassed, it's not a huge problem.
For a hard drive, there's not much point in having open-source firmware. You can already access the full functionality of the drive using open-source drivers.
With Nvidia's video cards, you can't access many of the features without using their closed-source drivers (you need to load the closed-source driver into your kernel). This can cause noticible problems, like crashes when there are driver bugs, or incompatibility with new kernel versions. Some people say it's not a problem (right now Nvidia is pretty good at fixing the bugs), but what happens when Nvidia decides their cards are obsolete, and stops providing drivers? They already did this with their 3dfx cards - not only did they stop updating the drivers, they don't even offer old ones for download.
Yeah I'm going AC on this one too.
:)
When we're talking desktop systems, I am getting real tired of hearing stuff like "Stability of Linux" - Windows 2000 or XP is at least as stable as linux running as a workstation/desktop!
Sure, as a server I wouldn't choose windows. I'd go for linux or a BSD... (I do have a linux server, uptime 66 days cause of a blown fuse
The point is, workstations/desktops are typically only on, say, max 12 hours. I can't remember last time my windows desktop machine crashed, and I am sure every one of you have the same experience. If not, well, you probably didn't set it up properly.
Anyway, I've seen the way you moderators bashes posts like mine (the ones that doesn't say linux is superior to windows). As I said I am AC, so you can just mod away.
To put it in perspective, a system based on an Athlon XP and Nvidia Geforce card is useless on its own, without software to run on it.
Yes, there's lots of power there, but I think the ultimate Linux system is one that does what it's intended to do, not just one with all the best hardware. If the box is employed as a server, for example, then the Geforce is an irrelevant, extravagent, useless nicety. The processor's also probably not worth what you'd pay, considering you could get something a little slower for a lot less.
There are no "ultimate systems" - just ultimate solutions.
The article seems Slashdotted, but from the summation I can only assume that this is another desktop x86 setup.
I'd rather like to nominate the iBook as the portable Linux dream system of the year. The TiBook is a little too flimsy for a clumsy oaf like myself, but the iBook is an indestructible, lightweight, brilliantly engineered machine. There's an Apple on the outside, but even if you eschew OS X for Linux, it's still the best bang for your buck in laptops from 2001.
--saint
It would be educational to see what system LinuxHardware could come up with with a $1000 spending cap, and a requirement that it reach a 60-day uptime under constant use.
An iMac running OS X, would be my suggestion.
Oh, it has to run Linux? Yeah, good luck with that.
--saint
Yes Linux is stable, but touting its stability over Windows isnt so much of a big issue anymore, IMHO. Yes if you are comparing it to Win9X/ME or 3.11...but with 2000 Pro or XP Pro..I really think thats not a huge issue any more. We are having an uptime contest on our machines at my work, and I am the only Windows2000Pro box in among the "contestants". The others are running slackware and SUSE. We all rebooted our machines at the same time.... 74 days ago. And my humble Winblows box is still up and fine. And I only have 256mb, while all the linux boxes have 512mb.
ill prolly get flamed but oh well. just my 2 cents.
i just bought a new file server at home with the following specs:
1 x Tyan 2640 motherboard (Athlon MP)
2 x 1800+ MP (1.5GHz) Athlon CPU
2 x ThermalRight SK-6 heatsink
2 x Delta "Black Label" fan
2 x Tekram 390U3D Dual Ultra-160 SCSI HBA
6 x Seagate 15K RPM 36GB U160 SCSI Cheetah
1 x Seagate 10K RPM 4GB LVD SCSI Cheetah
1 x Plextor 40X SCSI CD-ROM
1 x Plextor 12/10/32X SCSI CD-Recordable
1 x NetGear FA310TX 10/100Mbps NIC
1 x Trident Video (4MB, PCI)
1 x CoolerMaster ATC-400 rackmount case
4 x Crucial 256MB ECC DDR-SDRAM
it's not much on the gaming front, but damn does it crank out the dnet keys (RC5: 10.5Mkeys/s)!
i'm also very pleased with the disk throughput. each individual 15K RPM Cheetah pulls ~55MB/s. all 6 done in RAID-5 maxes the PCI bus (133MB/s). theoretically it should cap around 266MB/s (due to the 64-bit PCI bus), but i'm not sure why it doesn't. still, 100+ MB/s is pretty damned fast.
Why do I need a fast processor and a uber video card, for a 80X24 console running apache.
fsck that, linux is for bitches.
Maybe they should get themselves a server that doesn't get slashdotted.
I'm sure the GeForce really helped there.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
usefull with it other than run apache. Sure, go ahead and lets see how stable linux is with the multitude of hardware support that windows has. Win2k is absolutely the best desktop OS ever, no question about it.
Shouldn't you guys be off compiling your kernel? Go now, go.
Linux is for sucks!
Mobo with onboard sound
Duron 1300
RTL8129 ethernet
Geforce2mx
256 or 512mb RAM.
40gb barracuda iv
Ricoh 24x10x40 cd
Logitech optical mouse
pick your own keyboard, speakers and monitor
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Well, I've been trying all evening (UK time) to access this site but without success. Doesn't say much for their Linux hardware does it?
When x86 is the weakest design of them all.
Good for gaming perhaps, but Linux isnt really a gamers OS.
Why no Itanium based PC? Sparc? What about SCSI Raid 0, what about bandwith?
As if a Gforce3 really matters on a Linuxbox that cant even do Alpha channeling yet in the GUI, and as if it matters if you have an AthlonXP thats designed for Windows?
System of the year for a Windows user yes.
But for Linux? I could do better. When building a system you build it for the software that you run on it, not build it because everythings name brand.
Ok so lets say you run games, Thats when you need Gforce 3. (Linux users dont apply here)
Lets say you do alot of graphics manipulation, then you need perhaps another card.
Things that all users can use is alot of ram, SCSI raid, and a fast CPU, but unlike Windows Linux runs on any CPU, people always forget that.
The only problem with Itanium is its price, but for System of the year, price shouldnt be the issue.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Seems to be designed for Windows users. I mean you have athlonXP, which is an OK cpu for gaming, but it gets totally smoked by Itanium, Sparc, and other more powerful CPUs.
Also bandwith is a major issue, speed of ram is an issue, your CPU is only as fast as your RAM and HARDDRIVE not your damn CPU.
Having alot of L2 cache would make a diffrence as well, the 3d card in Linux couldnt even be used due to the lack of games, poor driver support, and the GUI itself cant even use the card for 2d stuff like alpha channeling, Windows speeds up the GUI using 2d speed of the video card.
Beyond all of this the CPU design of x86 is just inferior to alot of other CPUs which arent x86. Take the Itanium i know its a fortune but if I'm going to call something system of the year, and its a Linux box not a Windows box, why would i care if its compatible with x86 based Windows applications and games?
Thats what Windows users care about mostly.
Linux users want a powerful workstation to run powerful applications, or they want a server, but for gaming Windows is the only option.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
You've captured my thoughts in a nutshell. My brother just forked out a few thousand for a new WinOS machine with a 1.4 pentium chip and 64mb nVidia graphics card. Sure, there are places and times you may need / want these peripherals, along with some extra RAM, but I'm running the latest build of Debian on a very stable Pentium 100 with 32mb of RAM. Without installing Linux, this machine would've been made redundant (indeed it was, for several years), however buy using Debian I've not only taught myself something, but made a powerful computer that ultimately can perform tasks my brother's new PC can't, especially in regards to serving, routing and the like. With Windows, this machine's hardware would not be used to it's optimum, so I'm thankful to Linux that I have an extra PC at my disposal
I mean its all wrong.
First, any machine I'm designing for Linux, 2 most important things will be.
Ram, Its going to have at least a gig.
Harddrive must be SCSI raid, or fibre channel array.
4 Harddrives in Raid0 mode transfering data at about over 200 megs a second, and a gig of ram. The next thing you will need is good motherboard which can handle the bandwidth.
And when choosing a motherboard you'll need a Good CPU. THE best but most expensive is the Itanium, the sparc CPUs seem better designed to handle the bandwidth than the AthlonXP, Sparc CPU has about 8 megs of L2 cache, and top it off with a high quality harddrive such as the Cheetah Series from Seagate, the one with the 16 megs of vcache is the best one (the one i use)
With this you'll have the most speed possible because you wont have any bottlenecks.
Stupid to have a fast CPU and slow ram.
Stupid to have a slow CPU and fast ram.
Stupid to have a gaming card which cant be used (Gforce3)
Stupid to have a slow harddrive and fast everything else.
And last, if you are going to use linux, theres no rule saying you must use X86 based CPU, but if you do, you'd be better off with Xeons or AthlonMP over the XP series of Athlon.
Dual processing power really helps when dealing with 3d graphics and photoshop effects.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Sure linux can run with a weak machine, you just cant run powerful software. You can run weak software and add plugins as needed. So tell me are you running blackbox? afterstep?
No this is not a flamebait, or a troll post. I'm simply sayin when you have a machine like this, you dont have the right to say KDE or Gnome or Enlightenment is slow.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The Dutch railway company is blocking non-IE users. Pass it on and submit a complaint. Thanks.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
Is that why I can't attach to shared memory, sendmail crashes, and machines need to be rebooted because of esoteric errors? Oh, ok. cool.
you're joking, right?
try FreeBSD on for size.
"Ultimate" Linux box, and it only has one CPU?!?
/.'s new sponsor?
No SCSI RAID?!? The "ultimate" Linux box (excluding big Sun servers) would be something like a dual AthlonMP, or a 4+-way Xeon, with Ultra320 SCSI RAID, and/or a fibre-channel SAN.
Why the hype? Is Linux Hardware
For those who said who needs a $3oo dollar graphics card
the answer is almost No home user. But if you want to play there are more games available then just a couple.
Ever play with openuniverse?
Maybe you want to write a fast game using sdl or gl?
or just play a game
http://www.lokigames.com/products/
http://www.happypenguin.org/
http://www.tuxgames.com/
Quake even gets higher frame rates when using linux.
Get a free ipod.
There were far mor advances in 2001 that really should have been mentioned. The biggest I can think of is the introduction of SMP for Athlon based systems. Granted the Tyan thunder K7 is pricey (includes dual channel scsi), but while you are getting scsi, a *nice* case, expensive power supple and the like, it makes sense to go ahead and shell out the bucks for a SMP system. The only downfall to all of this would be that the Tyan Thunder SMP Athlon board would not fit inside the case so it would require an upgrade to a larger case. Oh yeah and through on a SoundBlaster Audigy as well. That would be a more ultimate system.
Oh yeah the Tyan Tiger MP (S2460) is a newer board that does not have SCSI and is priced at around $230.00.
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament
Tribes2
Heavy Gear 2
RTCW
There's five.
Actually, this dream machine shares a lot in common with the "Ultimate Linux Box" as described by Eric Raymond here back in November. I must admit that Raymonds selections appeal to me a whole lot more. You couldn't possibly get me to give up Antec cases and Tyan motherboards. They are like Mom's Apple pie and ice cream. You've known they are so good for so long why even consider anything else.
You're on crack.
"Hard drive must be SCSI RAID or fibre channel array".
*Why*? Sure, for specialized stuff like heavy duty file servers, this makes sense, but why for your own personal computer? So your file copies go slightly faster?
And you can get an Itanium, SPARC, etc when Linux on the Itanium and SPARC is as tweaked an optimized as vanilla x86 Linux. Waay more people and more core developers are x86 people -- guess where performance has been worked on the most. Much as I dislike Solaris relative to Linux, if I were going SPARC, that's where I'd be.
"Stupid to have a fast CPU and slow RAM"
"Stupid to have a slow CPU and fast RAM".
Oh, get real. Completely depends on what you're doing. If it's a Renderman array, no, the RAM speed is not an issue. If you're just doing massive matrix multiplications, then the RAM is probably the bottleneck. And frankly, the difference in RAM speed you can be getting with a given type of processor is not that significant.
I'm not a big fan of Nvidia because their Linux driver support is a lot more half-assed than Matrox (who does fully open source drivers and has support for new features way before Nvidia does). But if you want to play Tribes 3 at some silly res like most hard core gamers seem to do, then I suspect that that GeForce 3 is not going to go to waste.
"Dual processing power really helps when dealing with 3d graphics and photoshop effects"
What the hell are you talking about? Photoshop in WINE, maybe? If you're talking about Linux, presumably you mean GIMP and povray. Povray *does* have a hack to let it run in multiple threads to use multiple processors (though Povray wasn't exactly architected around MP), but the GIMP's filters are all (that I know of) single-threaded.
Did they forget the flaw in the via chipset thet prevents any PCI scsi controller from exceeding 60mb/s? Adaptec/cheetah combo is a complete, utter waste of effort on that board.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
And while he was talking about the usability of Linux (which I still think pretty much sucks in many ways) back in 1998, I believe that sentiment applies to hardware as well. I hate dealing with stupid IRQ conflicts and other idiotic reliability problems most x86-based hardware has.
Give me a Mac, give me a Sun, give me an x86 manufacturer who actually puts together systems where I don't have to worry about anything more than how to get the cover off to (easily!) add more RAM or a bigger disk. (Ha. Only Dell comes closest there and I'm still not really impressed with their kit.)
Unless you can dedicate the time to chasing hardware conflicts or you're planning to do a lot of research constantly to find out what particular PC parts are good and which are crap, PCs are generally a good way to waste a lot of time that you could be using for solving worthwhile problems. In general I want to plug my computer in, turn it on, maybe install an OS, and just have it work so I can get to hacking.
My GeForce 3 Ti500 is put to quite good use running Loki's port of Tribes 2 (at 1600x1200).
HanzoSan, I disagree - your post is definitely flamebait, and it should be moderated as such. Nowhere did digital_gh0st even mention KDE, GNOME, or windowmanagers in general. It is difficult to see why you would respond with accusations of bashing specific UI enviroments, when the poster is probably not even running an X server on the Pentium 100 Debian box.
You are also off the mark when you say "powerful" software. The term you are looking for is "bloated" software. With a less powerful machine, it is unpleasant to run bloated software. Powerful and weak are subjective terms, but they don't seem to fit your usage of the word. Does "weak" software even allow you to add plugins? "Powerful" software doesn't necessarily even use graphics... many would say that powerful software needs only a command line.
-castlan
I firmly believe that anyone who creates an "ultimate" linux system with only one display must have something wrong with them. What about a great display? Like 3 pci based video cards that play nice together and some whopper LCD panels?
And I should note that there are two more words that they should think about after that: multi PROCESSOR!
And my opinion on this system -- nice decoration, but PC boxes belong in the CLOSET!!
The stability of Linux? Shudder!
Thank god there are systems like NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris (yet) or even OS/2.
I can't help it, but as a non-gamer I find all computers on the market today more than sufficient for my needs. Any CPU that I can buy brand new is enough. Memory is more or less free, and 512 Mb is more than I've ever needed. A 20Gb hard drive makes it. Most graphics adapters can do 1600x1200x85.
I just want something that is "completely" silent. My Mac G4 is not silent. My IBM Thinkpad is not silent. The Sun Blade 100 at my work is not silent.
There was an article a few days ago on Slashdot telling how to build a quiet performance PC. I believe dropping "performance" could make it even more silent.
How do I build a machine (to run my favorite free os) that is completely silent?
Bloat is only called "Too many features" Because your computer cant handle it all.
Plugins and configure your bloat. Or have every feature turned on. When you have a fast machine with more than enough power, does it make a diffrence how many features as on when the program loads instantly? Why not turn them all on and use them when needed?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"Why*? Sure, for specialized stuff like heavy duty file servers, this makes sense, but why for your own personal computer? So your file copies go slightly faster?"
Ever used a file sharing program downloaded about 5 gigs worth of files in a matter of days and need to organize them all? Of course not.
Ever encode an ogg, mp3. mpeg4 divx or anything? Of course you havent. Ever tried encoding a few hundred files all at the same time while downloading by the gigs and playing a game of quake? Oh of course not. You need RAID if you are going to be dealing with gigs of files and as we now have the ability to download by the gig, its time to have harddrives which can handle alot of data movement with some speed, no one wants to wait all day for a file to copy, delete etc etc. Some people want instant speed.
"Oh, get real. Completely depends on what you're doing. If it's a Renderman array, no, the RAM speed is not an issue. If you're just doing massive matrix multiplications, then the RAM is probably the bottleneck. And frankly, the difference in RAM speed you can be getting with a given type of processor is not that significant."
Right it does matter what you are doing, but this isnt about building a very specialized box, its about building the fastest machine possible. Fast machines are fast because they have NO bottlenecks. The machine i described would be an all around fast machine, and perfect for a serious desktop user. Yes some people DO use linux on the desktop, and some people DO like to have speed.
"
And you can get an Itanium, SPARC, etc when Linux on the Itanium and SPARC is as tweaked an optimized as vanilla x86 Linux. Waay more people and more core developers are x86 people -- guess where performance has been worked on the most. Much as I dislike Solaris relative to Linux, if I were going SPARC, that's where I'd be."
Good point, it may be optimized for x86, so compile the software yourself so its optimized for your hardware, then run it. Usually theres source code which works on just about everything(like mozilla for example) and can be optimized slightly.
"What the hell are you talking about? Photoshop in WINE, maybe? If you're talking about Linux, presumably you mean GIMP and povray. Povray *does* have a hack to let it run in multiple threads to use multiple processors (though Povray wasn't exactly architected around MP), but the GIMP's filters are all (that I know of) single-threaded."
Gimp, Photoshop, you get the point. Anyhow graphics manipulation programs run faster with dual processors.
As far as Gforce3, linux cant even fully use Gforce2
You make a few good arguements but this is assuming that you are using the PC, I assumed nothing, the PC example i gave is simply the best PC that can be built for pure SPEED, its not the more powerful, its just the best PC you can have for speed on the desktop.
You can of course add a ton of CPUs and make a PC for some specific calculations and have it be faster, but it wont be faster all around.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Is somebody working on that?
-As for RAM, you will alway need N+16 Mo RAM, where N is the amount you have as of today.-
This rule always proved true 8)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Yeah, I couldn't disagree more with your statement regarding Linux not doing games. My current favorite four games run in Linux, often better than on my windows 2000 machine. My Linux box has a geForce 2 MX in it, my windows box has an ati 8 MB rage pro something. Guess which is the better video card? And yes, I put it in my Linux box, I get better performance out Quake 3 Arena in Linux.
The Linux Gamer market may be a niche inside a niche, but were there, and we can be just as loud as annoyingly bad starcraft players on Battle.Net
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I have a dual-boot machine and the Windows® 95A side absolutely chocks on the installed modem card, and has developed what I think are BIOS related problems, (P 90MHz ISA system) but my Linux® side of the machine runs fine at least for a P90.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Would be nice to see last years dream system and what it cost then, and maybe a list of what those same items cost now. My linux box is still a p166 and I get along just fine, I am sure I would be able to do with last years top of the line dream machine, I just want to see what the price diff is. Maybe linuxhardware.org is reading and can put that article back up.
Linuxwatch.org has the budget system of 2001 up, $399 total cost.. http://www.linuxwatch.org/article.php?sid=35
There is an open-source nvidia driver (nv) project under way. It doesn't support many things like the DVI-D output, and it's slower than the nvidia driver. I'm not in any way involved, so I don't know whether they've had a look at the nvidia drivers. I'd expect there would be legal problems in doing so, however.
Anyone know for sure?
Just goes to show how times change. The reason Linux and I had our little falling-out was waiting entirely too long for X drivers that worked on my Rage 128.
Thanks dude, and although it wasn't too flaming, you're right in saying that I didn't mentione KDE or Gnome, and why would I. We all know the most powerful commands are run from the console (terminal) mode in Linux, Unix and other non-Win OSs that support GUI layers. :)
98SE with 256Mo Ram (I LOVE cheap Ram 8)
Problem solved using MemTurbo 2.
Also another side effect : when using a KVM sitch with no power link (passive) Memturbo seems to get 98 to check all keyboard - video - mouse and allow you to work just after you switched.
I just love this small soft.
BTW anyone has a hint on DVD Card with a 3309 chipset + Linux ?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Not sure if you really want an answer, but I'll post this and et you decide.
Having too many extra "features" is usually a symptom of poor design. If a feature is added to a product after the initial design, it tends to cause clutter, whether in the interface, or in the program's internal logic (read: source code). If programs have too many features added, then instability is usually introduced along with the loss of clarity. A sign of well planned and executed design is that a program's properties are inherent; it doesn't depend on extra features being added later to make the program generally useful.
A much more eloquent way of saying all of the above, "you know that it is finished when there is nothing else that needs to be taken away" - this imples that a product isn't improved when "features" are added. Rather, when the concept is simplified.
In fact, while I tend to find myself at odds with the "worse is better" philosophy, that is the philosophy that UNIX grew from. A corruption of the "less is more" sentiment, it is how Unix type systems avoid "creeping featuritis." This approach has been relatively successful until Free Software Operating Systems running XFree86 became common. Now huge bloated environments like GNOME and KDE have replaced relatively simple and purposeful Window Managers.
Even if I am using an SGI Onyx 3800 with multiple graphics pipes, multiple MIPS processors, multiple Gigs of Cache-Coherent NUMA RAM and more raw I/O capability than you could ever saturate doing productive work, there are still downsides to using bloated software. Bloated monolithic softare is not as flexible as the combination of simple modular applications that each exhibit stable and consistent behaivor. It is called The Principle of Least Suprise. Bloated monolithic software tends to have more bugs, because the are less stable interfaces to act as checkpoints. Also bloated monolithic sotware would not be as able to take maximal advantage of my killer SGI box, as it would very difficult and complex to have it run in parallel. In contrast, by running modular components in unison, the resources could be distributed more efficiently.
You may have noticed that my bloated paragrphs have been more difficult to read then if I had just made my point in a succinct and compact manner. You may have found, for example, that if one applet in the GNOME dock has locked up or is misbehahving, then the functionality of the entire dock is compromised until the problem with the misbehaving applet is resolved. The problem with bloatware, it that it causes minor problems to compound - to "bloat", if you will - until they have collectively become major problems. As a rule, the larger something grows, the more complex it become. As a system grows in complexity, more errors are introduced.
No matter how powerful your computer's hardware is, it cannot handle logic errors (read: bugs) any better than my 486dx33.
-castlan