Building a VL machine with even less time

[Monty67]

Hello all

I know I know I've been AWOL alot lately. Well I have a very good reason. My wife and I are expecting our second child this Sept so the whole, "getting everything ready" is in full gear.

On the good but not as good as the above news news ( ), our tax return will finally get me back into linux land. When I moved into my new house I converted my old VL machine to SMoothwall so that my house would be networked and protected. Well that left me in the land of W2K and XP with things rather unstable in W2K.

So here is the deal. I started looking around to prebuilt systems and was a bit disappointed when I saw what I was getting. Then I saw an (http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200803.ars) article over at ARS and did the math. I could build almost twice the system myself then if I were to buy it prebuilt. My budget is $500 max and here is what I was thinking of.

(Already have a case and pwr supply)

• Asus M2A-VM HDMI Motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Retail
• 2GB DDR2-800
• PNY Geforce 9600GT
• Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATA
• DVD-RW/CD-RW: Samsung SH-S203B

Which has me right about ~$402.

I'd love nothing more then to see this become my main machine. Web surfing, podcasting, IPTV watching so I want to make sure everything is linux compatible. I am spending alot of time with google trying to find out about any issues with any of these parts but I thought I ask the VL community since I'll be running the latest release. I also have a Dell 22 in widescreen that runs 1680 x 1050 that I want VL to power and take full advantage of.

Thank you for any info you can provide. I.e. swap piece A out for piece B to improve something. 

 

[lagagnon]

I see no reason why there would be a problem with any of that hardware. I assume the audio chip is on the mobo? If so, just check that that is OK with Linux...should be. I have built a few computers and I prefer Asus mobo's myself, so I think that machine will absolutely fly with VL on it!

[Megamieuwsel]

"Fly"?....
More like "Reaching escape-velocity"...
Better nail that box to the ground to prevent it from launching itself into a crash-course with Pluto.

[Triarius Fidelis]

"Fly"?....
More like "Reaching escape-velocity"...
Better nail that box to the ground to prevent it from launching itself into a crash-course with Pluto.

I see there is now a better medium for delivering the Golden Record...

[Dweeberkitty]

I also have a Dell 22 in widescreen that runs 1680 x 1050 that I want VL to power and take full advantage of.

My screen is that same size and I have an Nvidia card as well. Just choose autodetect when asked for a screen res, and it should work perfectly.