I am planning on building a mid size Linux desktop for general purpose use. I have built a few gaming desktops in the past (and by past I mean when 256 MB of RAM was 
) for playing Battlefield 1942, so it’s been a while since I’ve built anything. I’ve been taking Linux A LOT more seriously since the “Digital Freedom Enlightenment” of Jeff’s movement, but have noticed that there are some areas where hardware combatibility are of concern. My online research on this topic brings up links for system76, or a somewhat vague article. Is there anyone out there who has built their own Linux machine that knows of “Linux friendly” hardware? Thanks in advance
I am writing this on my custom built gaming PC that is running Manjaro GNOME. Rather flawlessly I might add. Here is my hardware list:
MOTHERBOARD: MSI 970 GAMING
DRIVE: Western Digital 500gb SSD
RAM: Kingston 4x4gb 2300mhz (16gb)
CPU: AMD FX-8370 4.0ghz, 8-core, 8-thread, 8mb cache
GPU: ASUS GTX1060 6gb
CASE: NZXT (forget the model number)
All of this hardware is almost 7 years old. You should be good with just about anything, save that I have been told that NVIDIA doesn’t always play well with Linux systems. In order to avoid any issues, I’d go with an all AMD system. For the other components, get whatever you want!
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What @SBHX mentioned will work nicely!
I have an HP Omen, which I got it on a sale a couple of years back with a Core i7 (6-core, 12 threads), 16GB RAM (upgraded it to 32GB), 256GB SSD NVMe (I upgraded it to 1TB) and a 2TB HDD (upgraded it to 2TB SSD + 1TB SSD). For graphics, it had the NVidia 2080 RTX - 8GB NVRAM. At the time it was around $1,400 - when the GFX card alone was $850. It runs Linux perfectly!
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But for a mid range rig, you’d be looking in the 4gb to 6gb GPU range. Which would run any distro currently available.
All that being said though, you’re better off buying a pre-made PC than building your own. Microchips, GPUs and the like are in short supply right now because of China, and also Crypto miners who buy up graphics cards in chunks, leaving nothing to the hobbyists.
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@SBHX @vasileios Thanks for the replies. I’m patient enough to wait for things to become available, plus I’ve got a couple of gaming desktops that are about 4 years old that are going to make GREAT candidates for Linux. Thanks again for clearing that up for me.
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@Slamminbones - to your “Digital Freedom Enlightenment” of Jeff’s movement, I think we’ve got a tag line!! :)
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