Linuxwatch Budget System of 2001

A reader writes "Linuxwatch.org has posted their Budget System of 2001 in response to LinuxHardware's 2001 System of the year. Boasting their system is 13% of the price and plenty of power for "normal users". Running at 1.4Ghz with 256MB RAM, it doesn't seem to bad for "normal users"(whatever that means)IMHO."

So what does it mean...

[dperkins]

...if their budget system is 4 times faster than my system?

*blush in shame*

And I consider myself a geek...

Very good question

[DragonWyatt]

It's just like the AC on the site asked (paraphrasing), "Great box, where's the vendor?"

I know that the place I work for would probably buy lots of these for an appliance app we've designed and sell, if we could get decent no-hassle quick-turnaround warranty service on them.

Re:bad soundcard choice.

[Lumpy]

forgot a link.... soundcards compared [pcavtech.com]

This will give hard specs about the SB live compared to a ton of other cards... Heck the SBLive is of lower quality than the SB64PCI.

I want to see the New Audigy line spec'd out. did they finally fix all the audio problems or is it a Live warmed over.

Good for a lot

[JanneM]

I like really fast systems; I simulate brain areas for a living (or, well, for a PhD), and like lots of speed. The reality is, however, that even with an application like that, I spend a very small time actually running the simulator, and most of my time in an editor, writing code, writing papers, or writing grant proposals. This system, overall, would probably make me just as happy as a biggest-bang-of-all kind of product.

The only app I can think of that would require the best PC available (and that does not simply require the fastest system) is games. You want to run really serious simulations or hardware design apps? Well, get a big workstation or a PC cluster or something. You want to run smaller stuff? Run it on an ordinary PC, maybe get a cup of coffee while it churns - or get some text written while the simulator is working.

We're approaching the inflection point where it simply does not apply to get steadily faster, more potent computers. Last years machine - or that of three years ago - will do pretty much everything you throw at it. Not even MS has been able to increase system requirements at the same speed hardware has improved for the last couple of years.

/Janne

Not a complete system..

[roguerez]

I tried to post a comment at that site, but it seems their comments system is down (slashdotted?). Anyway, I'll post it here:

I miss a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a floppy drive and a cpu cooler (you'll need a good one with that CPU: it will not burn out your pocket, but WILL burn out itself and your motherboard if you don't cool it properly).

Furthermore, keeping a cdrom drive out of the equation isn't really honest. Almost any desktop box needs one. I don't know whether a NIC is included in the "system of the year", but this is the same as for a cdrom: almost any desktop box needs one.

I guess we can double the price for this so called budget system, because working without input and output devices (silly unneeded things like a monitor/keyboard etc) is a bit difficult.

Uncreative System

[tempmpi]

I think there system lacks any creativity. Now that you can buy all the processing power an average user needs very cheaply, why do they just make a budget system centered on performance ?
They should made a system centered on low noise or one that has good look or something other that isn't found in every system now.
What about making a small and quite system using a shuttle sv24 barebone [hwextreme.com] with a passive cooled c3 ? Or a dual duron ?
And why did they just use 256 mb ? Now that ram is that cheap, they should brought at least 512 mb while that 1.4 ghz athlon isn't really needed. Or what about ECC sdram ?

It sure beats no sound card....

[2Bits]

In our company, computers are not even allowed to have sound card, coz:

• Employees are sitting too close to each other, sound card would just disturb other people
  
• Everyone is in one big room (for better communication between employees, that's what we're told), so no sound insulation
  
• Sound card does not add any value to coding and debugging
  
• The company is against pirating music from Napster
  
• The company is against sound pollution
  
• The company is a software development house, not a music content creator
  
• You are supposed to work, not listen to radio during company's time
  
• It saves money for the company. When the company makes profits, everyone will be better off (last time I checked, the company's making profit, and those who are better off seem to all have pointy hair. Well, we don't have snacks anymore, as this is not healthy. So I guess we are better off too...)
  

Bwahaha - fair warning

[WyldOne]

You don't have permission to access / on this server

And I thought we were slash.

But, Hemos you should give them fair warning before you post a hardware realted article. You know we're a bunch of OCP junkies

Re:So what does it mean...

[talks_to_birds]

Here's a pic [finchhaven.com]

t_t_b

Actually, it makes lots of sense..

[schon]

Obviously, the reason hardware prices have gone down is because the cost of building computer components goes down over time.

No, the reason hardware prices go down is because hardware companies have competition

Cost to design and engineer a CPU or video card costs $X .. company sells enough to cover costs, and (slowly) starts dropping the price because now they only have to worry about manufacturing costs.. If they didn't drop their prices, their competition begins to steal their marketshare.

Software company releases an OS or Office Suite, and sells enough to cover programmers time. They then see they have no competition, and decide "well, we'll just keep the price the same - we have no reason to lower our prices, because we have no competition."

Average Linux User Spends Time Compiling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Average, yes.

But the average computer user isn't the average Linux user.

The average computer user, if using Linux for whatever reason, will be using some sort of friendlier distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake.

RH and (As far as I know) Mandrake both come with package systems - the average computer user has very little to compile.

(And there's a big if there. The average computer user has no need for Linux, and probably shouldn't be using it. No, I'm not knocking Linux or praising (laugh) Microsoft. However, I think we all know that an improperly secured Linux box is a freakin' disaster waiting to happen. While Microsoft operating systems can almost never be made secure, they come at a certain modest level to start with, no fiddling involved. Linux? Sure, you can make it as secure as one of Saddam Hussein's bunkers, but you'll be fiddling with things that are beyond the grasp of the 'average' computer user.)

Re:Good for a lot

[Forkenhoppen]

Not true. Video decoding takes a lot of work, and for that, I'd estimate DivX requires over 600MHz for the higher-quality content. Likewise, if you're like myself and working in the software development industry, you need at least that to recompile all your code in a reasonable amount of time. (I'm talking about under Microsoft Visual C++ here.)

This, of course, assumes you have a decent video card, because otherwise you have to worry about YUV->RGB conversion taking time too, when we're talking DivX. Likewise, DVD decoding needs at least 500MHz even with full hardware support. Anything less than a Duron's not gonna cut it.

Then let's not forget audio. If you've got a Soundblaster Live or Audigy, then you're fine, but for those poor souls (like myself) who're still using onboard audio like AC97, Windows 2000 and XP is always running the audio through a software mixer. So if you're listening to mp3s and you have a sound theme enabled, that's eating into it all too. (Not much, mind you, but there is a small hit. That plus the way onboard audio is so cheaply done.. I'd make an uneducated estimate of somewhere between 40-60MHz lost to audio playback. Plus 100MHz for an mp3.)

And lets not forget about USB, the BIGGEST hog of CPU ever. If you have a cheap webcam, then every time it snaps a picture you're gonna drop 100 to 250 MHz. A USB or bus mouse is likewise gonna suck some MHz, but mind you not half as many. Scanners and printers likewise suck up USB resources, but usually only when in use. Rule of thumb; if it's USB, and it's hooked up, it's slowin' something down.

Don't even get me started on modems.

So really, while you can use an older system, you're going to need to keep using the older hardware with it. You know, the hardware that actually IS hardware, and not just a bunch more wires going into the CPU. If you're using a serial mouse, an ATi or (recent) nVidia video card, a hardware modem, and a SB Live, then you're partially right, in that something around the 700-800MHz mark is sufficient. But if you've got (or are planning to have) a dozen peripherals daisychained through one of those ridiculous USB hubs, or are one of those people who insist on beta-testing^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^Bpurchasing games the day they come out...

Personally, I think anything less than 1GHz on IA86 is just stupid at this point. Anything more you want to spend, if you're not planning on playing games, get disk space and memory. 512MB is a good safety for memory. If you have DSL, then budget at least 40Gb for diskspace.

Where to find those old CPUs?

[Com2Kid]

Since AMD stopped production of the K6 line of CPUs quite some time ago, finding older CPUs can be a bit hard. And even so they are still about equal in cost to the Duron line of proccessors.

A local middle school recently got a bunch of K6-(2/3) 555mhz systems for $269 each, the best that can be done with Durons is ~$450 each.

The main advantage to the older K6 line though is the wide variety of cheap integrated Super Socket 7 motherboards that were made.

Computer prices could drop another $100-$150 if some more companies made some cheap OEM-ish integrated motherboards for the K7 line of CPUs. (the few ones that are out there are not in large supply for third party buyers and they are not /nearly/ cheap enough to be a better deal then a seperate video card. Integrated sound is doing good on the platform though.)

Prices would drop even further if a cheezy 1 IDE channel Make Stuff Work style Motherboard was made. You know, 2 RAM slots, 2 or 3 PCI slots, integrated AGP, etc. Heh. Yah it would suck for many causes, but damnit, I have had quite a few requests for such systems! (I do custom build jobs, most of what people want now days are e-mail terminals with a wordproccessor)

Some Linux Distros Can't install on small disks:-(

[billstewart]

I have a lab at work that includes a few interesting boxes, a bunch of routers and switches and network connections to test and demonstrate and teach the stuff we sell, and a bunch of helper boxes whose job is to answer pings, display tcpdumps, run web and ftp servers with exciting files like "1MBjunk.txt" and "100MBjunk.txt", run MRTG and other network collectors, etc. Because AT&T was once a computer company (:-), we have a bunch of boxes that the IT People (Mordac the Preventer and his bean-counting kin) have forgotten about, with cute little death star logos on them and then-fast P66 processors, but usually disk drives that are 1GB or less.

RED HAT REALLY CHOKES BADLY AUTOPARTITIONING SMALL DISKS. It likes to keep things proportional and make sure there's lots of room in /home and /var and /tmp, and picks how much space /usr and I think /usr/local get, and if you try to install GNOME or KDE, even after ditching enough other stuff to make the "total" space requirements fit, it wants to put more stuff in /usr than it has room for and doesn't adapt well. And of course now, it can't even do an install from one CDROM (on the web server, since my P66s didn't have CDs), and insists that all the files it downloads from FTP need to be in the same directory, so even my FTP server's once-huge 4GB drive doesn't have enough space to install 1.3GB of CDROM on the hard drive, whereas before it could serve any netbooters from the CDROM in the CDROM drive (not blazingly fast, but I don't need that.) Sigh.

Re:And they wonder why sales have dropped...

[Penrif]

From "man make"

-s Silent operation; do not print the commands as they are executed.

-j jobs
Specifies the number of jobs (commands) to run simultaneously. If there is more than one -j option, the last one is effective. If the
-j option is given without an argument, make will not limit the number of jobs that can run simultaneously.

I'm not sure what making make silent gets you as far as using SMP for compilation (considering terminal output is pretty free these days), perhaps you meant "make -j"?

Slashdotted Servers

[batobin]

I really don't see what the big deal is with slashdotted servers. I've had two of my own articles posted on slashdot, and rode the wave just fine....ON A CABLE MODEM.

Yes, it's true. I hosted a review / editorial site on a Cox@home cable modem for around a year and a half. Never had a problem. It maxed at 30k/sec upstream. Images might have been slow to load, but the entire page always loaded in less than 10 seconds (and rest assured, it had plenty of images, screenshots, and data to load). I think the problem lies less with the amount of visitors going to the site, but with the inefficient page designs with inefficiently placed and uncompressed images.

But then again, maybe I'm just blowing my own horn. :)

Re:And they wonder why sales have dropped...

[damiam]

Quoting the parent of my comment:

On the dual processor theme, the X Window System probably takes as much CPU scrolling your terminal window during the make as the compiler takes churning out your code. Having a processor handling the screen while another processor sends it the stuff to draw is a good idea.

I did mean make -s, which, regardless of how much effort it really takes a processor to scroll a ter \minal window, would be solution to the parent's problem.

Re:Not a complete system..

[swankypimp]

Good point. I recently hacked together an e-mail box for my mom out of old parts I had (hdd, cd-rom, monitor, processor-- everything but a new motherboard and case, which cost $100).

I was right up against my budget for the project, and it just didn't seem right that I had to spend an additional $40-$50 for floppy, keyboard, and mouse. IIRC, the cheapest floppy drives on the 'Net were nine bucks plus seven shipping (and those were out of stock; most were in the $16 range), keyboards were four plus six, mice about the same. As homebuilding becomes more popular, these incidental charges become a big advantage for system builders, who can get them for next to nothing by buying in bulk from their suppliers; surprisingly, my friend buys prebuilt systems from a local mom n' pop for about the same as what it costs me to put my machines together for this very reason.