[sf-lug] Rick's explanation of his internet setup.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Adrien Lamothe (alamozzz at yahoo.com):

> My rule for choosing new, "bleeding edge" hardware, which I have
> employed with great success, is called "Use what the gamers use."
> Computer gamers are the most insatiable, curious, and often
> technically knowledgable consumers of computer hardware. 

They also not only have no objection to dependency on proprietary
drivers; they flock to it.  Worse, they favour systems that are grossly
out of balance by normal-usage standards:  heavy on CPU and video
processing power, relatively deficient in I/O.

During the tech collapse, when the rest of the computer market took a
tumble, gamers dominated briefly because they were practically the only
people buying new hardware, and therefore manufacturers loved them.
Portable system boxes from Shuttle and Alienware popped up with
transparent cases with neon-lit highlights, and brightly coloured
motherboards.  Gamer kids suddenly started apppearing on Linux mailing
list dispensing hardware advice, and, when you objected that you didn't
think it was a good idea leaping to brand-new video, SATA, and ethernet
chipsets that work on Linux only with proprietary binary-only drivers,
were told with a sneer that obviously you weren't serious about
performance.

And, it turns out that they're basically all about _MS-Windows_ gaming,
anyway, and Linux is an afterthought.

I read Anandtech and Tom's Hardware from time to time; the opinions are
interesting but _utterly_ Windows-centric -- as are 100% of their test
results and benchmarks.

> While on the subject, using AMD-based systems is a pretty safe bet
> these days. 

Use only 2.6 kernels on Opterons.  2.4 has problem, there (and on EM64T,
too).