Going to build a Linux box, is this Shuttle XPC ok?

CaptSaltyJack · #1 4th February 2007, 05:17 AM

I've got my eye on the Shuttle SK22G2B. I'm wondering if 512MB RAM is enough for Fedora Core 6? (and 7 when it comes out) Or is 1GB recommended? Also, will a single SATA drive work ok? I heard that in FC5, the Anaconda installer had probs with SATA.

Lastly, with the CPU.. is it OK to go budget on it? Say, an AMD Sempron64 2800+? (1.6GHz) I'm under the impression applications will run faster at 1.6GHz on Fedora than they would on WinXP with the same CPU..

joe.pelayo · #2 4th February 2007, 05:31 AM

Hello CaptSaltyJack.

One of my PCs that currently has FC6 on it (and probably FC7 in the future) is very similar to what you are posting.

It is a Sempron 3100+ at 1.8Ghz (a little overclocked) with 512MB of RAM. It has two IDE hard drives that work fine and a 128MB graphics card (the cheapest I could find, I just wanted to free some RAM, under Windows).

Linux will certainly use your machine better than XP (I had XP Pro in that machine before). Talking a little bit more about the RAM I would suggest you to check how many memory slots your mobo has, because the fewer slots the better to get the larger RAM modules you can.

I think FC6 will work fine with the integrated graphics card (if it is included in your mobo), however your are gonna be unlikely to get cool things like XGL. If you are gonna buy a graphics card I suggest you to get an NVIDIA, their drivers are better.

Good luck.
Joe.

CaptSaltyJack · #3 4th February 2007, 09:42 PM

OK, I will put together the box I described above.. probably drop in a semi-decent nVidia card (I wanna use compiz, looks killer!). 512MB RAM for now.. I can always buy a 2nd stick later if I find it's not enough. (how do I see in Fedora if RAM is running low?)

mwette · #4 4th February 2007, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptSaltyJack

how do I see in Fedora if RAM is running low?

Code:

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        507544      84696     422848          0      10300      29328
-/+ buffers/cache:      45068     462476
Swap:      4088532        112    4088420

Above is from my "init 3" FC5 server which is 512M and 2.8GHz Pentium 4 iWill shoebox.

The following is from my FC6 box running GNOME, tbird, firefox.

Code:

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2073708    1917472     156236          0     283624     979316
-/+ buffers/cache:     654532    1419176
Swap:     14763692          8   14763684

joe.pelayo · #5 5th February 2007, 05:30 AM

My AMD Sempron based desktop works quite well with 512MB of RAM. Under GNOME and even using Beryl it uses at most 220MB.