Need a new desktop. Linux compatibility out of the box?

[uRock]

Which model Lenovo do you have? @ uRock.

3000 J Series, which they do not seem to carry anymore. http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/desktops/

[Bandit]

There are real money to save by building it yourself.

If you were at any time considering ZaReason or System76, then I take it you're going for quality = have a good budget. You can build quite a monster-pc for a less than ridiculous amounts of money, and tailor it specifically to suit your needs.

General rules of thumb when shopping for Ubuntu-PC parts:

- Graphics-card? Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia... I have nothing against ATI, and I expect them to overtake Nvidia at some point in the future driver-wise, until then...
- Stick to quality-brands (no no-name stuff)
- Don't buy bleeding edge, it's expensive, and chances are, unsupported.
- Be careful when choosing wireless cards.
- When considering a given part, google reviews about it; it's an immense help, and you'll figure out if the more expensive part is worth its price, or bottlenecked by some other part and therefore inconsequential.
- HP, Dell, <insert generic brand name> is not quality (perhaps apart from the processor, which is what people focus on). It's cheap hardware for the unwashed masses. There's a reason you don't see those brands when you go to the nerdy specialist stores, because nerds know better.
- You will mess up at some point (compatible hardware, CPU-socketing, ventilation etc.). It's the only way to learn, but in the long run you'll save money and get better performance, just like a car-mechanic have botched up some repair but saves a bundle in trivial repairs that'd have otherwise cost a bunch at the local repair-shop.

This.. valid and very true points..

If I could add one thing, build your own based on the above.

[kaldor]

Well, this cleared up a lot of concerns I originally had. It seems the only thing I need to watch out for is the graphics card. Any recommendations on which NVIDIA card would be the best and most painless these days?

[kaldor]

Considering one of these. Anyone with similar specs have any feedback on that?

I used a liveUSB on some similar PCs at the store. None of the PCs with an AMD gpu would boot. As soon as the mouse cursor appeared, it froze and there was lots of screen flickering before falling back to a TTY. Pretty hard to find anything with NVIDIA preinstalled in stores; might just need to build one myself afterall. I know the stories about ATI/AMD cards not being ideal, but a lot of people seem to have great results with either Catalyst or the Free drivers. I just want to be able to install Ubuntu with minimal headaches and have the same performance (roughly) that I would on Windows.

This was a lot easier a few years ago when I picked out an HP laptop which "just worked" out of the box without any issues whatsoever

[rewyllys]

I've been looking around, and due to being in Canada System76 and ZaReason are quite expensive to get shipped here. . . .

You might try Googling search requests along the lines of

Canadian-built Linux desktops

When I tried the one above, it yielded several possibilities that I would follow up if I were in Canada.

Good luck with your quest!

[kaldor]

Just picked up an HP. I'm amazed with the results running AMD graphics.

The open source graphics were a bit sluggish, so I installed catalyst via the additional drivers program (jockey). NO issues whatsoever. Rebooted into Ubuntu without a sweat, and games ran with amazing FPS even in WINE. I am very surprised at this, considering how much people complain about AMD.


The card is a Radeon HD 6450. Greatly recommend it.

Also, dual booting with Windows 7. I've never really used it for more than a few minutes before, and I have to say I'm fairly impressed with that as well. Apart from the buttload of bloatware preinstalled by HP, it's a pretty nice OS. Though, I'm pretty amazed I actually had to reboot my PC to install IE9... it's a bloody web browser

[wolfen69]

Build your own. There's nothing like assembling your own. I get a rush the first time I turn it on, and it works perfect. Start loading distros!

Most good online parts suppliers have reviews which can help in making your decision. I search for the people (in reviews) that have installed and ran linux on that hardware without issue. You'll have a much better chance of success if you do a little research and have patience.

[wolfen69]

ATI/AMD cards not being ideal, but a lot of people seem to have great results with either Catalyst or the Free drivers. I just want to be able to install Ubuntu with minimal headaches

Nvidia. Any of the mainstream cards work great. I can see why people complain about linux if they have an AMD card. Sure it works for some people, but I guarantee that nvidia will generally work better. And if you don't need heavy 3D, just go with the nouveau drivers.

I love how fedora has the nouveau drivers rocking the twinview OOTB. But I always install the nvidia drivers to play a couple games and enjoy gnome-shell to it's fullest.