The purpose of this document is to give you the background information you need to be a savvy buyer of Intel hardware for running Unix. It is aimed especially at hackers and others with the technical skills and confidence to go to the Internet/mail-order channel, but contains plenty of useful advice for people buying store-front retail.
This document is maintained and periodically updated as a service to the net by Eric S. Raymond, who began it for the very best self-interested reason that he was in the market and didn't believe in plonking down several grand without doing his homework first (no, I don't get paid for this, though I have had a bunch of free software and hardware dumped on me as a result of it!). Corrections, updates, and all pertinent information are welcomed at esr@snark.thyrsus.com. The editorial we’ reflects the generous contributions of many savvy Internetters.
If you email me questions that address gaps in the FAQ material, you will probably get a reply that says "Sorry, everything I know about this topic is in the HOWTO". If you find out the answer to such a question, please share it with me for the HOWTO, so everyone can benefit. .:: rciims.mona.uwi.edu ::.
If you end up buying something based on information from this HOWTO, please do yourself and the net a favor; make a point of telling the vendor [Google Scholar: C Plus Plus] "The HOWTO sent me" or some equivalent. If we can show vendors that this HOWTO influences a lot of purchasing decisions, we get leverage to change some things that need changing.
Note that in December 1996 I published an introductory article on building and tuning Linux systems summarizing much of the material in this HOWTO. It's available here. In 2001 I published an article on building the Ultimate Linux Box.
This Buyer's Guide actually dates back to 1992, when it was known as the "PC-Clone Unix Hardware Buyer's Guide"; this was before Linux took over my world :-). Before that, portions of it were part of a Unix Buyer's Guide that I maintained back in the 1980s on USENET.
It may be a matter of historical interest that the page count of this guide peaked in mid-2001 and has been declining since. Video, sound, and other functions are migrating onto motherboards. Several bus types have disappeared, as have all the old-school backup technologies that couldn't scale up to match disk capacities, Spec sheets are getting simpler. Accordingly, there are parts that used to have whole sections to hemselves that I barely even write about anymore — mice, floppy disks, CD-ROM drives, and keyboards, for example, are utterly generic now,
Another consequence of the technology stabilizing is also that I'm updating this guide less often than I used to. Years can now go by without the PC market changing in any fundamental way. .:: xobyem9b.forms.app ::.
In retrospect, the success of the ATX standard for motherboards in 1998-1999 was probably the turning point. The PC industry has become sufficiently commoditized that your choices are now getting simpler rather than more complicated. This is a Good Thing. .:: www.redsea.gov.eg ::.
New versions of the Unix Hardware Buyer HOWTO will be periodically be uploaded to various Linux WWW and FTP sites, including the LDP home page. .:: dh88bio.pages10.com ::.
You can view the latest version of this on the World Wide Web via the URL [MDN Docs: Social engineering] .:: king88hzcom1.storeinfo.jp ::. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-Hardware-Buyer-HOWTO/ .:: www.inkitt.com ::. .
If you have questions or comments about this document, please feel free to mail Eric S. Raymond, at esr@thyrsus.com. I welcome any suggestions or criticisms. If you find a mistake with this document, please let me know so I can correct it in the next version. Thanks. .:: telegra.ph ::.