Help: About Linux Server

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 20:34:48 +0800, Amy Lee wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hello,
>
> I'm a college student, and wanna build a small Linux server for me, just
> in home. And I choose AMD Opteron 146 as my processor. However, I don't
> know how to choose other device, including RAM, Motherboard, HD and so
> on. And I'm sure that RAM is 2GB.
>
> Could you tell me which Linux OS should I use and how to choose other
> computer devices?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Amy Lee[/color]

I like MSI motherboards. I have a couple of A64 systems with different
generations of Nforce chipsets, they've given me zero problems and
they've always been 100% Linux compatible. You should avoid ABIT
motherboards, I have a Core2 system with an ABIT motherboard and it's
riddled with Linux incompatibilities. I also built another system with an
X2 3800+ and an ABIT Nforce4 motherboard and that also had a few Linux
issues, that system was meant to be an XP box so they Linux problems
didn't matter in the long run, but I'll never buy another ABIT product.

The best place to look for motherboards is on the NewEgg website. They
have an excellent search feature which will allow you to find the boards
that have the features that you want. They also have customer reviews for
everything they sell, you should search those reviews for the word Linux.
You'll be able to tell if other people have had any compatibility
problems with the board. If Linux isn't mentioned in the reviews for a
particular board then look at a different board. BTW I can't say enough
nice things about NewEgg. I've bought a lot of stuff from them, generally
if I order it in the evening it's on my doorstep the next morning even
though I always select the 3 day shipping option (sometimes it does take
3 days). I've also had a very good experience with their handling of
things that didn't work. I bought a USB wireless adapter that was
supposed to be Linux compatible. When I got it I couldn't make it work.
Newegg credited me with the price of the thing and I didn't have to send
it back (it was only $20, I'm sure they would have wanted a $150
component back).

The Opteron 146 is a socket 939 part, is there any reason that you have
chosen it? If you haven't bought the processor already then you should
choose a different processor. Either a socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 or an
Intel Core2 Duo would be a better choice. The socket 939 parts use DDR
RAM which is obsolete, the X2 and Core2 use DDR2 RAM which is the current
generation of RAM. DDR2 RAM is considerable cheaper than DDR RAM. Newegg
is selling 2G of DDR2 for as little as $62, the cheapest DDR RAM is $110
for 2G. You can also buy larger DIMMs for DDR2. A DDR2 system can hold 8G
of RAM, a DDR system can only hold 4G.

Linux Distros are a matter of taste. I use Fedora and Cent0S (the free
clone of Redhat Enterprise Linux). For desktop use Fedora is better, it
has more features and it's more up to date. For servers CentOS is better,
it has greater compatibility with commercial software and it's supported
for a much longer time.