Ubuntu on an Alienware

[acelin]

Oh yeah. I am about to buy an Alienware Area 51 Desktop.
Specs:

Area-51® 7500

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Alienware P2 Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with AlienIce™ 3.0 Video Cooling - Space Black
System Lighting: Alienware® Standard System Lighting - Fusion Red
System Cooling: Alienware® Standard System Cooling
Power Supply: Alienware® 750 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Graphics Processor: Single Graphics Card - 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 x 1024MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA® nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Operating System: Windows Vista® Home Premium

System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200RPM 16MB Cache

I will be installing two more drives:

320 GB Ubuntu installation drive
1 TB Backup Drive

Optical Drives : Single Drive Configuration - 20X Dual-Layer Burner (DVD±RW)
Enthusiast Essentials: Dual High Performance Gigabit Ethernet Ports
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer High Definition 7.1 Audio -

I had Ubuntu for the past year on an external HD that died, and my laptop is crappy so I decided to buy myself a real computer.

Now I think I will be able to switch over completely, as that External installation severally hampered my conversion.

[SuperSon!c]

Oh yeah. I am about to buy an Alienware Area 51 Desktop.
Specs:

Area-51® 7500

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB
Alienware P2 Chassis: Alienware® P2 Chassis with AlienIce™ 3.0 Video Cooling - Space Black
System Lighting: Alienware® Standard System Lighting - Fusion Red
System Cooling: Alienware® Standard System Cooling
Power Supply: Alienware® 750 Watt Multi-GPU Approved Power Supply
Graphics Processor: Single Graphics Card - 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT
Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 x 1024MB
Motherboard: Alienware® Approved NVIDIA® nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Operating System: Windows Vista® Home Premium

System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - 250GB SATA 3Gb/s 7,200RPM 16MB Cache

I will be installing two more drives:

320 GB Ubuntu installation drive
1 TB Backup Drive

Optical Drives : Single Drive Configuration - 20X Dual-Layer Burner (DVD±RW)
Enthusiast Essentials: Dual High Performance Gigabit Ethernet Ports
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeGamer High Definition 7.1 Audio -

I had Ubuntu for the past year on an external HD that died, and my laptop is crappy so I decided to buy myself a real computer.

Now I think I will be able to switch over completely, as that External installation severally hampered my conversion.

nice!! keep us posted how it goes with all that new hardware.

[acelin]

Oh you bet I will! I want to prove the viability of Ubuntu Gaming... I will try to get benchmarks for both Windows and Ubuntu!

[SuperSon!c]

what games are you/do you plan on running?

[gamergod131]

Looks nice. Pretty much a clone of my future build that I'm gonna start at the end of may. Only big difference would be instead of an 8800gt, I have 2 8800gts in sli.

[acelin]

Looks nice. Pretty much a clone of my future build that I'm gonna start at the end of may. Only big difference would be instead of an 8800gt, I have 2 8800gts in sli.

Yeah, I looked into building, but this is cheaper... if I went to SLI I couldnt afford it.

As for games, the following:

UT3
Halo Combat Evolved
Civ 2
Call of Duty 4
Doom 3

[SuperSon!c]

i didn't even know you could run COD4 under linux, cool!

[SomeGuyDude]

Sweet. Get that $4000 machine, and make sure you run Windows on a virtual machine or you're not actually going to be able to play too many games.

[Istonian]

Sweet. Get that $4000 machine, and make sure you run Windows on a virtual machine or you're not actually going to be able to play too many games.

Windows Virtual Machine + gaming = bad

[acelin]

i didn't even know you could run COD4 under linux, cool!

Oh yeah- you can run anything.


Sweet. Get that $4000 machine, and make sure you run Windows on a virtual machine or you're not actually going to be able to play too many games.

That is where you are wrong.

1) It only costs $1798.96 after tax and shipping.

2) Cedega baby.

[bsharp]

Oh yeah- you can run anything.

I would like to know where you heard that, because it just isn't true. Only about 1/2 of my games have worked under WINE (I'm too cheap for Cedega when I have XP on another partition) and when they do there is a huge preformance hit, and I'm on a decent system:

Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz
2GB PC6400 (800mhz) RAM
160 GB SATA II 7200 rpm hdd
Geforce 8800 GT 512MB

My advice: Dual boot.

[EnergySamus]

If I were you, I'd dual-boot. Not only will you be able to game, but you will be able to have all of the conveniences of Ubuntu!

EnergySamus

[acelin]

If I were you, I'd dual-boot. Not only will you be able to game, but you will be able to have all of the conveniences of Ubuntu!

EnergySamus

Oh yeah I am dual booting, cause some Engineering apps I use I need them to be guaranteed to work at 100%-

Cedega runs almost anything, and most anything that it doesnt have support for can be ran someway.

[fedex1993]

why buy an alien ware when you getting your self ripped off left and right by dell/alien ware. You should buy the parts off newegg and build it your self its fun its a learning experience and also ITS ALOT CHEAPER

[acelin]

why buy an alien ware when you getting your self ripped off left and right by dell/alien ware. You should buy the parts off newegg and build it your self its fun its a learning experience and also ITS ALOT CHEAPER

Dont you think I know that? Read the thread- the same computer would cost me 50-75% more easily.

[zmjjmz]

There's some stuff going on at Ideastorm regarding getting Ubuntu preinstalled on Alienware, and Alienware put out a survey regarding it too.
http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/10087469/Ubuntu_on_Alienware
Now that I look at it.
You posted that idea.
It even has the same title >.>

[acelin]

Hehe oh yeah...

[SomeGuyDude]

Buying a gaming rig with Ubuntu on it and then dual-booting it with Windows to run games it just hilariously dumb. Sorry, folks.

[acelin]

Buying a gaming rig with Ubuntu on it and then dual-booting it with Windows to run games it just hilariously dumb. Sorry, folks.

I will be running some engineering apps on Windows, but everything else on Ubuntu. I think I can get them running on Ubuntu, but I need to make sure they are at top performance.

[Paqman]

but I need to make sure they are at top performance.

I strongly suspect they'll run a lot better on their native platform than they will shoehorned into Linux.

Ubuntu is good at lots of things. Gaming isn't one of them.

[Hells_Dark]

I strongly suspect they'll run a lot better on their native platform than they will shoehorned into Linux.

Ubuntu is good at lots of things. Gaming isn't one of them.

Hum yes. But that's not ubuntu that is not good with games..
I mean, it could, that's the games that are not ported.

[insane_alien]

uuntu will run games made for it with no problems whatsoever. its just when you try and get a game to run that wasn't designed to use anything linux.

the guys at wine are doing a fine job of getting square pegs to fit in round holes, even when the pegs are 2-3 times the size of the hole.

[acelin]

uuntu will run games made for it with no problems whatsoever. its just when you try and get a game to run that wasn't designed to use anything linux.

the guys at wine are doing a fine job of getting square pegs to fit in round holes, even when the pegs are 2-3 times the size of the hole.

I will be using Cedega, as it runs them much better, and even with Wine, most games run MUCH faster on Ubuntu. It is just engineering apps really need nothing to get in there way.

I just found out though that my favorite engineering app has a linux version- so, only one piece of software to go !

[blithen]

Windows Virtual Machine + gaming = bad


more like = horrible.