[Sderby] Hardware help.

[Simon Hales]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Richard Taylor wrote:

> Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:13:03 +0000
> From: Richard Taylor <richard at rtaylor93.wanadoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: South Derby LUG General Mailing List <sderby at mailman.lug.org.uk>
> To: sderby at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Subject: [Sderby] Hardware help.
>
> I'm new to the list, having been subscribed for about a week, and not
> having been to any meetings yet.
>
> That said, I was hoping that someone might want to offer me  some help.
> In the next couple of weeks, I plan on building myself a new machine
> which is going to be a linux-only system, not dual-boot like most of my
>    previous boxes have been. It's been ages since I last did any system
> building, and I was wondering if there's anyone in the LUG that would
> consider offering me their assistance in putting all of the various bits
> together?
>
> In addition to that, I'd also like advice from all of you on linux
> compatibility issues. I'm probably going with an Athlon-64 processor. Is
> there anyone on the list using Gentoo with the Athlon-64 archictecture?
> What about motherboards? Which chipsets are you using (if you have the
> Athlon-64) and how well supported is it? Lastly, what about SATA HDDs?
> Do they work under Linux?

I recently bought an Athlon64 3200+ and an Asus K8V/GD motherboard with a
VIA K8T800 chipset.  The onboard gig LAN, the UDMA 133 IDE controllers,
the USB 2.0 host adapter and stuff like the IRQ routing (I still can't get
used to seeing IRQ's with numbers above 15 having used 386's, 486's and so
on for years longer than I've had even my last Athlon (pre XP type)
system!) and acpi shutting down cleanly all seem to work fine and have
drivers in a generic kernel.org 2.6.7 or higher kernel.  Don't even bother
with a 2.4.  Both the VIA SATA/RAID (2 SATA ports) and the Promise
SATA/RAID (2 SATA and 1 IDE ports) controllers are detected by drivers in
the standard 2.6.7 kernel (but not the Promise IDE port) but I don't have
any SATA disks to play with yet.  I don't use the onboard sound but I
think it is also supported as standard.

I installed WinXP (Where is the Linux port of Doom 3, Diablo II, etc?
Plus I need it for work which earns me £10 per month contribution for my
broadband!) and the standard X86 port of Debian "Sarge" or "Testing".
This comes with the option to carry out the install under a 2.6.7 kernel
and is highly recommended if you want stuff to work.  I have compiled
kernel 2.6.8.1 for a K8/Opteron/Athlon series and installed a package
called "x86_64libs" but it is still only a 32 bit system.  I have a boot
CD for a semi-official native 64bit X86_64 port of most of Debian
"Unstable" and have actually booted from it but have not been inclined to
try it out yet!


>
> I don't want to spend my money on any components that won't work to
> their full potential with Linux, so if anyone has any testimonials, or
> horror stories, I'd love to hear them.
>
> --
> Richard

An official, fully maintained native AMD64 (or X86_64 or whatever they are
going to call it) port of a Debian "Testing" or "Stable" release is an
historical inevitibility, and I have the patience to wait.  Debian is the
"Universal Operating System" and from what I've read about the 64bit
Debian port so far it looks as if it will rapidly become one of the most
mature and supported of the many and varied architectures that Debian
already runs on.

I'm pretty sure I will hang on in there with Debian but would be
interested to hear of other users' experiences with native 64 bit
distributions anyway.  I believe one issue is the handling of libraries
for any precompiled 32bit binaries you may need to install even if the
installation of the distribution's native 64bit packages and compilation
of source files is just as easy as it would be under, say, my 32bit Debian
system.

Would be glad to hear other people's comments on running 64bit.  I've
alway's wanted to get hold of a DEC Alpha AXP or some similar box I could
run a non-x86 64 bit system (Linux, *BSD, even WinNT was available for
Alpha) on.  (Just to be different really:-).  I'm fairly sure that this is
what you are now getting if you buy an Athlon64 or Opteron processor and
obtain the native, rather than the x86 port of your OS.

Regards

Simon Hales


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