[PLUG] local hardware

[Michael M.]

Well, I'm glad I asked ... everyone had lots of great suggestions, even 
if some of them don't work for me right now.  Regarding building my own 
machine, down the road I will.  And I've been participating in Free 
Geek's build program, so I know it's not that hard.  Unfortunately, I've 
had to stop for awhile because I came down with pneumonia.  But I'm 
starting to feel better and hope I'll be able to resume in a week or 
two.  The hard thing is not so much the mechanics of it, but knowing 
what you want and what makes sense and what works together.  That takes 
a lot of research, if you're not fairly conversant with the options.  I 
think it's easy for people who are to forget how much more daunting a 
task seems to someone who isn't.  And this is especially true when you 
find wildly conflicting information about what's supported, by whom, and 
under what circumstances.  Searching Google/Linux for a particular piece 
of hardware turns up data that's sometimes two or three years 
out-of-date and might not be relevant anymore.  Sifting through that 
plus through the mountain of completely irrelevant stuff that turns up 
is a chore, not to mention sorting out the information that's accurate 
from someone's misdiagnoses of a problem.  I just don't think it's 
something you can do in the course of a week and come to completely 
satisfactory conclusions, unless you're already starting with a good 
baseline of foreknowledge about what you're interested in.  It strikes 
me from the comments many of you made that these are things you've been 
doing or thinking about for quite sometime.  Plus, it would be nice to 
see some of this stuff I've been reading about and I really don't have 
the energy right now to make a field trip.  So, for me, assembling the 
parts to build a box is more of a long-term project than something I can 
accomplish while I'm recovering.  Maybe I'm making it more difficult 
than it needs to be, but I have a tendency to do that sometimes anyway. 
  So there you are.

So I know you're all waiting with baited breath to know what I've 
decided.  :-)

I ordered a machine from these folk: http://groovix.com/solutions.html

The prices are decent if not exceptional, the machines are sufficiently 
configurable that I could get a couple of things I knew I wanted and 
trust that they know what they're doing with the rest.  They seem to use 
good parts, and obviously everything should be compatible because they 
load Ubuntu.  It's kinda nice to be supporting a company that's trying 
to make a go of supporting Linux for home use.  Even if it has a dumb 
name.  (Groovix?  WTF?)  It'll be interesting to get a machine with 
Linux that someone else has installed.  And it'll be my first AMD 
machine.  So I'm psyched.

Now if it would just get here already!

[While I was writing this message I managed to burn a piece of toast and 
set off the smoke alarm.  You see, technology hates me.]

-- 
Michael M. -- Portland, OR -- USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions 
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to 
dream." -S. Jackson