[NTLUG:Discuss] Hardware for Linux

[Kevin Brannen]

Al Wyatt wrote:
> 
> 2. Are any of the national (Dell/Micron/Gateway) PC
> sellers good options for Linux?

I recently bought a Dell Optiplex that has worked very well.  If you
like, you can take a trip to Austin and save several hundred dollars
at their factory outlet store.  I heard a rumor that there is an
outlet store in Carrollton, but I have yet to have time to
investigate. :-(  And you can pick up some good BBQ at the County Line
while you're in Austin! :-)

> 
> 3. I can see that most all of the popular video cards
> (like 3dfx and Nvidia) are well supported, but what
> about audio cards?  SoundBlaster's site seems to
> suggest their cards don't work well under Linux, and
> they're the most popular kind of sound card out there.

I've had good success with the old SB-Pro, an 8 bit card.  I have a SB
Live! card in my Dell.  Creative has released a Linux driver for the
card, which I have; but I have yet to install it.  I haven't had much
of a need yet.

> 
> 4. Partitioning the hard disk: IIRC, suse's distro has
> software for re-partitioning an existing HD without
> losing data (this would be helpful if I buy a PC with
> the M$ o.s. already on it).  Do other distros have
> such a utility?  Should I just buy something like
> Partition Magic if I really want to do this?

On the SuSE (and probably others) disk, there is a utility for this,
"fips" I think; the READMEs on the CD will tell you for sure.  I used
it successfully not long ago.  OTOH, I liked Brian's suggestion about
another HD, as the M$ software takes so much room, unless you have a
really big drive.

As a bonus, when installing with SuSE, I suggest using yast (or yast1)
not yast2.  The concensus seems to be that they rushed version 2 out
the door a bit too fast.

HTH,
Kevin