Buying components for a new build - Linux

buachille · 24 May 2022 at 19:40

I'm thinking of building a new computer. It would be all separate parts picked from OCUK. No dual boot. The computer will run Linux only.

If you are buying new parts from OCUK it's pretty difficult to find reliable compatibility information online, as the parts are mostly too new to be listed anywhere.

What are other people's experiences. I'm guessing just about anything I buy will run Linux. I've actually never had a problem with a piece of hardware and Linux, but spending thousands on parts and finding that I was wrong would be painful !!

HACO · 24 May 2022 at 19:47

There's a small chance that some drivers for newest chips/controllers (e.g. sound, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, etc) might not be bundled with the LTS versions of some distributions so you may need to manually install those, but these are minor things. I've been using Linux for over a decade and never had issues with anything that took more longer than half an hour to sort out.

buachille · 24 May 2022 at 19:51

HACO said:
There's a small chance that some drivers for newest chips/controllers (e.g. sound, ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, etc) might not be bundled with the LTS versions of some distributions so you may need to manually install those, but these are minor things. I've been using Linux for over a decade and never had issues with anything that took more longer than half an hour to sort out.

Thanks. That's kind of what I thought, but I wanted to hear other people's experiences. I've only been on linux for 2 years so you have over 8 years on me, so it's good to hear what's happened with you in these situations.

I've never used an LTS distro (unless Mint is LTS - not sure). The machine I'd be replacing is on Manjaro anyway, so very fresh software. I'm actually astonished at how fast the rolling release cycle is. I get a lot of updates. Just had one this evening.

Many thanks.

Mercurial · 24 May 2022 at 23:08

I built a system based around an MSI Z690 Pro A DDR4 & Intel i7 12700K with a 3060ti in January. I do have dual boot, but that is purely for my son's OOH gaming habits.

The main issue I have found (although not a show stopper) is that Intel 12th generation CPUs won't have Intel thread director support until kernel 5.18 (which is currently ragged edge), but this doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference day to day. I prefer Debian based distros so am currently using Pop!_OS 22.04 which is a rolling release (kind of) and run kernel 5.17 which was offered through auto update (normal Ubuntu LTS 22.04 (which is on 5.15) is upgradable but i'm far too lazy to bother if everything is working). If you are considering an AMD build this may not be a concern you need to mitigate against, but I imagine will affect Manjaro (based on Arch?) as well if you are considering an Intel build, although to me it doesn't seem to be a huge deal on desktop.

tl;dr - what HACO said, most things are sortable; but it is nice for stuff to "just work".

Mesai · 24 May 2022 at 23:15

I had a brand new Dell laptop, with an Nvidia card. Everything worked right out the box with Fedora, which is a very up to date and polished distro.

AMD and Intel are usually the safer bets. Depends what you’re using the system for in terms of the spec you need.

buachille · 25 May 2022 at 18:05

Thanks to you both.

System is probably going to be AMD mobo, cpu, and gfx card. AMD open source their drivers so I'd rather build an AMD system, and I don't want nvidia graphics unless I have to. I've never had a problem with nvidia graphics cards, but AMD seem much more linux friendly.