New Hardware

[Arran]

Hello
My wife's computer needs a heart, lung and brain transplantation.
So, I need a combination of motherboard, processor and graphic card. Possibly the graphic card could be integrated into the motherboard. She uses the computer mainly with Gimp to work on photos of her jewellery for selling them on the web, for preparing slides as teacher of creative writing to be used in adult education (LibreOffice) and of course general internet surfing.

My main question is not in first instance which products your recommend, but are there any brands which work better under Linux than others? Or are there special hardware made for Linux? Both of us are now Windows-free and can concentrate 100% on Linux suitably without any compromises.

Thanks for any help.

[xenopeek]

If you go with any recent Intel or AMD processor, you should be fine. Stay away from other manufacturers. I won't get in the Intel vs AMD flamewar, other than to say I using an Intel Core i5 2500k and it runs excellent on Linux Mint 11 and Debian 6 (with Stable repository) without problems. Not sure about LMDE (only ran that for a short few weeks).

Don't bother with a graphics card unless your wife wants to be able to play heavy 3D games (titles few years old will play fine on Intel Core i5 2500k or Core i7 2600k, for example). Any other game will run fine without a graphics card (all Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 have a built-in graphics chip).

I have a microATX motherboard from ASRock, the ASRock H67M-GE/HT. It has most modern features (DisplayPort, USB3 with back and front ports, SATA3, etc.) and it has been stable as a rock for me. The BIOS is fast and you can configure everything without Windows (not so for some ASUS motherboards). I've also built some PCs with Intel motherboards. They are stable and run problem free, but the BIOS is not as configurable as with ASRock. I wouldn't buy Intel motherboard again as the BIOS really is a weak point.

As for Linux support, I don't think one brand is better than another. The problem with motherboards is they are assembled from various chips and components. Motherboard A from a certain brand might work flawlessly, but motherboard B of the same brand might be a nightmare to get working. I don't know of any brand that actually provides real support for Linux. Best to research your motherboard in advance and see what Google is saying about other Linux users using it. That also means you shouldn't buy the latest & greatest model; as not enough Linux users might have used it yet for you to find problems other have had...

[lebigouden]

Vincent is right, Intel is strong these days in the CPU game. I'd still buy a graphic card though.. Most of the hardware is well supported under Linux now, except the exotic stuff so dont worry too much about that. As for specific hardware recommendation, hard to say without a budget.