Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
You can begin by totally avoiding anything that has ‘Win’ in its name. Winmodems, for example, are notoriously frustrating. These are low-cost modems that depend on software drivers implementing a proportion of functionality instead of embedding it within a chip. Even on Microsoft Windows, a winmodem won’t work without an appropriate driver. Often the drivers depend on functionality built into Windows making them unportable.
Beyond this, the most important thing to do is review lists of hardware known to be compatible. One popular reference site is Linux Online’s collection of vendors who have some measure of Linux support (but further research will need to be undertaken to ascertain if any specific component has available drivers.)
Additionally, be sure to scope out the official hardware compatibility list of the Linux distro or distros that you favour. Ubuntu advocates will find a detailed list in the Ubuntu Wiki and, keeping with the gPC/Eee theme, Xandros users can find an up-to-date catalogue within Xandros’ support pages. Going for the hat-trick, Red Hat and Fedora users can visit Red Hat’s collection of certified hardware.
There’s plenty of good guides to selecting a good mix of hardware choices that work well together. Some have a Linux bent (if a little old) whereas others, like Tom’s Hardware, have excellent and substantial content but are operating system agnostic. You’ll find great reviews and comparisons here between different offerings, breaking info on new releases, pricing and many other pieces of information, not least being invaluable help on knowing just what goes with what.
At heart, assembling a computer will be the same irrespective of what you intend to do with it, but do keep the Linux hardware compatibility lists in mind because this may rule out some of your options. I’d expect this to be a major reason why Dell, for instance, do not offer Ubuntu Linux across their whole range: they – just like Asus and Everex – have identified a very specific combination of parts which they know have full support within the Linux kernel as is. You really do want to follow in this example.
Some enthusiasts are particularly keen on working out the ideal combination of pieces; Andrew Comech, a New York mathematician, maintains a guide to building a good, cheap, reliable Linux desktop PC. The Linux Journal has published guides, with input from Eric Raymond and Don Marti, to designing an ultimate Linux workstation. Unfortunately, the guides are dated, with a 1996 release and a year 2000 revision, but much of the advice is very sage and still relevant. They propose, for example, that you do not buy powerful, hot, CPUs and then mount them in a case which lacks cooling.
With hardware under our proverbial belt, let’s check out the software side of the deal.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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