Building Your own Custom Linux PC

Welcome to TheCredence.com - You may like to subscribe to our RSS feed to stay updated.

Hardware compatibility was a major issue with Linux some years ago, but it's quite safe to say that we have gone past that point. Almost all major hardware components have Linux drivers available, and they can be used without much hassle. [I remember the days 4 years back when I had installed Red Hat 8.0 and it didn't recognized my monitor as well as sound card!]

However, some hardware producers have done a better job at supporting Linux now. If you are absolutely sure that your next PC will run Linux, a brief moment of planning ahead can earn you a very powerful system that runs like a charm. So lets build a Perfect Custom Linux PC. These hardware specifications are for Linux which are fairly popular.

The motherboard, which lays at the foundation of every system, should be the first item you will need to choose. It's hard to suggest one vendor or producer over another, but Asus and Gigabyte cards seem to have the best available support. Almost everything should work right out of the box, except for the case when the motherboard includes a feature that is special, but very new and not of a vital importance. Choosing a CPU over another is not an issue here – choose the one that suits your needs best.

Picking a graphics card depends a lot on what you need to do with your computer. An integrated video adapter is often enough, but when it's not, most users tend to recommend nVidia. Although ATI have done great efforts to improve the quality of their drivers, getting some ATI cards to work can still be tedious and prone to frequent errors, seemingly appearing out of thin air. You may need to watch out for TV Out support if you need it.

Nowadays, Linux supports almost any audio card out of the box, either through OSS or through Alsa (the latter is preferred). However, if you have any doubts about purchasing a certain audio card, or about the one integrated, visiting Alsa's project page will be edificating, as they have a comprehensive list of supported models.

Networking is quite easy to work with as well. Wired networking support is very advanced, with almost no significant network card lacking Linux drivers. Although the same does not exactly apply to wireless network cards, a quick check at LinuxCompatible will give you a hefty list of supported cards and chipsets.

Besides these, Linux does support just about any kind of hardware for which a unified general standard exists. This means that, unless your monitor, your mouse, keyboard, memory stick or MP3 player is one of a kind, it will work without problems. USB keyboards, mice and other common devices such as SD cards work out of the box without any tweaking.

Once you have made a list of all these components, the remaining binding elements – RAM, power supply and so on – are the choices you can make without some particular operating system in mind. I have just covered the basics of building your own custom Linux PC but I am sure you have some idea of what you have to do. Now build it and tell us your configuration as comment below.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Links you may find interesting -