Linux is about to take over the low end of PCs

[cousinlucky]

Thanks Dan!!

I recently learned that CompUSA is going out of business and Dell computers are now available at Staples.

From the very limited business exposure I get I have yet to hear anything bad about ASUS computers.

[Oxygen]

Thanks Dan!!

I recently learned that CompUSA is going out of business and Dell computers are now available at Staples.

From the very limited business exposure I get I have yet to hear anything bad about ASUS computers.

I heard their motherboards were unreliable and didn't work well with Linux.

[techieMoe]

I heard their motherboards were unreliable and didn't work well with Linux.

I know nothing about pre-built computers, but my test desktop (Rig 2) has an ASUS motherboard in it that has withstood much abuse over the past few years and come out swinging. I've had no reliability issues whatsoever.

[Roxoff]

I heard their motherboards were unreliable and didn't work well with Linux.

I've heard nothing of the sort, but...

Over the last 10 years or so, my server has been running Asus motherboards, from the lowly P2B-D up to it's current dual P3 1GHz thingy.

For my desktop machine, I selected Asus mainboards for each of the last 3 or 4 board upgrades, ever since my PCChips dual P2 (slot1) mainboard was sold on. When my missus' computer needed an upgrade maybe 3 years ago, I got it a P4 Asus mainboard (not by choice this time, but because someone offered me a package at a good price) and her recent upgrade (at the same time as mine) to dual-core athlon 64 AM2, went into an Asus board for a very good reason...

I get that to be at least 8 new computer mainboards by Asus that I've purchased through that time, with a variety of Intel and AMD chips. All these machines ran Linux of some sort or another, from RedHat 6, 7.1/7.2 and on, through various Fedora and CentOS flavours; they all worked.

Out of all that there was only one device that I didn't have working - the network port on one of my desktop mainboards which was just too damn new when I bought it. It was 6 months till the drivers were available. By this time, it'd got an RTL8139 compatible utterly-ubiquitous-network-card in it, which I didn't take out.

All these machines were stable; my P2B-D server mainboard was only supposed to run 2xP2 slot 1's at 500Mhz (100MHz FSB), that's all the BX chipset was supposed to handle. But of course, this was an Asus mainboard, so I overclocked the BX chipset to 133Mhz and ran 2x P3 733's in there for over five years. I upgraded that a few months ago, just after new year.

Asus goes with Linux very, very well in my experience.

[bigtomrodney]

Just to chime in I'm using the P5N-E-SLI and it works brilliantly with Linux. Not to mention there are new ASUS boards that have a full Linux desktop as their BIOS and instant boot-up desktop system. You can't beat that.

[Agent-X]

I think Linux will take over the low-end PCs. However, I wish more people created programs for parallel processing. I sometimes think people base ideal technology on power consumption. A lot of old computers using Linux and parallel processing programs doesn't seem to appealing when you notice the electric bill going up. But if you're trying to fight Skynet, then things don't seem so bad.

[Dapper Dan]

I just ordered an Asus eee pc for my wife from newegg.com. It should get here in three days just in time for Christmas! I looked for the model with the webcam and 8 gig, but couldn't find one anywhere on the net, so I got the "surf" model with no webcam and 4 gig. I can't wait!

[oz]

If these little computers really take off like it looks like they are going to, lots of people are going to be exposed to Linux that otherwise might not have been for years to come. Then, they they think to themselves, "hey, I can do this Linux stuff", so they wind up putting Linux on their desktops, too.

Go, Linux!

[Dapper Dan]

Maybe the day will come when at least some youngsters will sit down at their friend's Windows desktops and ask, "How do you get on the net with this thing? Where's the little fox icon??"