Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, JustAnEngineer
EsotericLord wrote:Why not just run Linux in a VM using VMware Workstation on Windows 7?
Flatland_Spider wrote:Intel NICs have good support, but Broadcom and Realtek can be problematic.
Flatland_Spider wrote:My personal pick in hardware would be a Tyan S8010 with a Opteron 4234 or an Intel BOXDH67CLB3 with an i3-2130 and a Radeon HD 6770.
Mentawl wrote:Yeah, I'd really quite like to just make a proper job of it, hence the seperate box . Thinking of the following:
Asus Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3 Intel Z68 MATX motherboard
Intel Pentium G630 2x2.70ghz
16gb Corsair Value Select
Mentawl wrote:Hadn't thought of Virtulisation to start with,
End User wrote:Mentawl wrote:Hadn't thought of Virtulisation to start with,
VMs rock. You already have a kick ass system. Why not spend the money on a second display/more memory.
just brew it! wrote:End User wrote:Mentawl wrote:Hadn't thought of Virtulisation to start with,
VMs rock. You already have a kick ass system. Why not spend the money on a second display/more memory.
FWIW a second display works really well with virtualization. You can full-screen the VM on the secondary display while the primary display still shows your native OS; the guest OS gets an entire display to itself, and switching back and forth between the host and guest OS is as simple as moving the mouse pointer.
lonleyppl wrote:If you're used to Red Hat at work, I'd recommend looking into CentOS. IIRC it's just a downstream version of Red Hat and doesn't require you to pay for support. Fedora is more of a desktop oriented downstream version of Red Hat, so would also be a good choice.
That being said, a VM should definitely be your start point, then go from there if you like it.
lonleyppl wrote:If you're used to Red Hat at work, I'd recommend looking into CentOS. IIRC it's just a downstream version of Red Hat and doesn't require you to pay for support. Fedora is more of a desktop oriented downstream version of Red Hat, so would also be a good choice.
lonleyppl wrote:That being said, a VM should definitely be your start point, then go from there if you like it.
bthylafh wrote:Another thing you could try instead of (or after) a VM is Wubi, which is Ubuntu's special installer for Windows systems. It sets up dual boot using Windows' boot manager, and instead of partitioning the drive it creates a virtual hard drive using a single large file on your Windows partition, /and/ it can be removed from Add/Remove Programs. The only real downside is that disk i/o is a bit slower than using a native partition.
When you run it you can choose which of the desktop environments (Unity, KDE, Xfce, LXDE) you want and 32- or 64-bit.
Maybe there's some project like that for Redhat-based distros.
just brew it! wrote:lonleyppl wrote:If you're used to Red Hat at work, I'd recommend looking into CentOS. IIRC it's just a downstream version of Red Hat and doesn't require you to pay for support. Fedora is more of a desktop oriented downstream version of Red Hat, so would also be a good choice.
Nit-pick: Fedora is closer to being an upstream for Red Hat, not a downstream. Fedora is where they try out all the new bleeding edge stuff; the features that make the cut eventually find their way into RHEL. Though I suppose since Fedora is sponsored by Red Hat, maybe it would be even more accurate to call it a sidestream?
chuckula wrote:If you are REALLY wanting to use an all-open source system, especially at the kernel-driver level, then you really have to go with Intel graphics.
just brew it! wrote:It really depends on what the goal is here. Since it's explicitly a "learning" box, I'm kind of figuring that learning how to deal with the ins and outs of proprietary video drivers should be on the table, since that's what you're going to encounter out in the "real world".
End User wrote:There is nothing worse than booting my main workstation after a kernel update and having to install updated Nvidia drivers from the command line when I should be working on something else. You don't get that dose of reality with a VM.
just brew it! wrote:Flatland_Spider wrote:My personal pick in hardware would be a Tyan S8010 with a Opteron 4234 or an Intel BOXDH67CLB3 with an i3-2130 and a Radeon HD 6770.
Nice Opteron system, but probably overkill in this case!
just brew it! wrote:chuckula wrote:If you are REALLY wanting to use an all-open source system, especially at the kernel-driver level, then you really have to go with Intel graphics.
It really depends on what the goal is here. Since it's explicitly a "learning" box, I'm kind of figuring that learning how to deal with the ins and outs of proprietary video drivers should be on the table, since that's what you're going to encounter out in the "real world".
lonleyppl wrote:If you're used to Red Hat at work, I'd recommend looking into CentOS. IIRC it's just a downstream version of Red Hat and doesn't require you to pay for support. Fedora is more of a desktop oriented downstream version of Red Hat, so would also be a good choice.
That being said, a VM should definitely be your start point, then go from there if you like it.
Flatland_Spider wrote:All three have support for KVM built in, which will save you from having to setup something like Virtualbox or VMware Workstation.