Actually those old Creative cards are great with linux. Hardware mixing, multichannel (digital and analog) audio and drivers in vanilla kernel all have been working for years. Everything started to fall apart after (K)ubuntu started to use PA. I suddenly had ALSA, PulseAudo and Phonon on my KDE desktop. Nothing was working anymore.
I personally would hide some sort of bridged network device inside printer or any other networked device. Device then logs all network data going to printer. Some of those Linksys devices with Linux would be good for this purpose. Logged data would be sended to 'secret' server using mobile data (Linksys boxes have USB connector?). What else... oh, we need to add some microswitch that fries my SIM card and hacked Linksys box if printer case is ever opened. That would be perfect!
I think you can get similar or better results (using less money and time) with just wiimote and projector. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ starting from 2:15 to see what i mean.
Go for Qt/C++. Your application is then available for Windows, Linux, Symbian and Maemo/Meego. Qt Creator is great tool to make user interfaces and using WRT is something to take a look at also. For a quick start go to http://qt.nokia.com/downloads and see some tutorials.
You should know that it's not about window manager at all. It's about applications that are made using chosen toolkit. I use KDE and 99% of applications i use are made using KDE/QT. That makes them work well together and experience is constant. Also nothing stops me from using WindowMaker with KDE applications, but i think that would be just stupid.
OpenSUSE integrates very well with KDE desktop. All those little things like automatic detection of new connected monitor and mobile data connection setup are reliable and well done. It looks and feels much more polished than Kubuntu.
You are the lucky one. I also have ATI 48xx series card and last three (or four) releases from ATI only cause hard lock when Xorg starts. No matter if i use 'ubuntu' or ATI version (or other distribution for that matter). Opensource drivers almost work except videos look trashed and fan is spinning at full speed all the time.
However, i also own another computer which is Lenovo Thinkpad U160 with very common i3 intel chipset.. sadly, it's also missing working driver. Issue is related to i915 driver.
Oh... and at work, i have dualhead desktop with old NVidia 6600. It used to work very well until i upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 (and later to 10.10). Now desktop is laggy as hell, close to unusable. Opensource drivers have issues with dualhead.
I've been running Opteron servers with VIA chipset for years. Most of my computers at home also have different VIA chipset. I never have had any problems. Servers have never crashed and they are running software that heavily uses I/O and cpu load is almost maxed out 24/7. And yes, they run linux of course.
Can you tell us what kind of problems are you having or are you talking about some old KT133 chipset?
I personally choose Intel or VIA when it comes to chipsets.
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Actually those old Creative cards are great with linux. Hardware mixing, multichannel (digital and analog) audio and drivers in vanilla kernel all have been working for years. Everything started to fall apart after (K)ubuntu started to use PA. I suddenly had ALSA, PulseAudo and Phonon on my KDE desktop. Nothing was working anymore.
Won't work if you want to use proprietary drivers and/or have more than one monitor.
I personally would hide some sort of bridged network device inside printer or any other networked device. Device then logs all network data going to printer. Some of those Linksys devices with Linux would be good for this purpose. Logged data would be sended to 'secret' server using mobile data (Linksys boxes have USB connector?). What else... oh, we need to add some microswitch that fries my SIM card and hacked Linksys box if printer case is ever opened. That would be perfect!
I think you can get similar or better results (using less money and time) with just wiimote and projector. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ starting from 2:15 to see what i mean.
Go for Qt/C++. Your application is then available for Windows, Linux, Symbian and Maemo/Meego. Qt Creator is great tool to make user interfaces and using WRT is something to take a look at also. For a quick start go to http://qt.nokia.com/downloads and see some tutorials.
You should know that it's not about window manager at all. It's about applications that are made using chosen toolkit. I use KDE and 99% of applications i use are made using KDE/QT. That makes them work well together and experience is constant. Also nothing stops me from using WindowMaker with KDE applications, but i think that would be just stupid.
OpenSUSE integrates very well with KDE desktop. All those little things like automatic detection of new connected monitor and mobile data connection setup are reliable and well done. It looks and feels much more polished than Kubuntu.
... it's FaceTime!
Well, it's hard to use GPS navigation software if phone is in your pocket.
You are the lucky one. I also have ATI 48xx series card and last three (or four) releases from ATI only cause hard lock when Xorg starts. No matter if i use 'ubuntu' or ATI version (or other distribution for that matter). Opensource drivers almost work except videos look trashed and fan is spinning at full speed all the time.
However, i also own another computer which is Lenovo Thinkpad U160 with very common i3 intel chipset.. sadly, it's also missing working driver. Issue is related to i915 driver.
Oh... and at work, i have dualhead desktop with old NVidia 6600. It used to work very well until i upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 (and later to 10.10). Now desktop is laggy as hell, close to unusable. Opensource drivers have issues with dualhead.
Things used to work just few years ago...
.. i was sure we are talking about Linux desktop.
Maybe thats why i'm using 100M/10M connection. It's not cheap (43 euros / month), but allows you to seed also. I live in Finland btw.
I've been running Opteron servers with VIA chipset for years. Most of my computers at home also have different VIA chipset. I never have had any problems. Servers have never crashed and they are running software that heavily uses I/O and cpu load is almost maxed out 24/7. And yes, they run linux of course. Can you tell us what kind of problems are you having or are you talking about some old KT133 chipset? I personally choose Intel or VIA when it comes to chipsets.