PC building, it never ends (nerdiness ahead)
For a long while I used an old Pentium 4 powered beige box, equipped with a meagre 60gb hard drive, an asthmatic 512mb of RAM and integrated graphics. It was slower than a crippled snail, but it soldiered on and to this day mostly still works.

When I bought a snazzy new HDTV a couple of years back I decided to hook my PC up to it using the VGA connection, eliminating the need for a computer desk. However it would only display a resolution of 1024x768 - the integrated graphics were so poor the PC could not display widescreen resolutions, leaving the 16.9 display under utilised - it was a GNOPS display.

This would not do, I needed a graphics card. Ebay had a large number at reasonable prices, however most required a PCI Express connection, something my old motherboard lacked.

This would not do, I needed a new motherboard, which in turn needed a new processor, new RAM and a new Power Supply Unit. Thus began a chain that saw a small upgrade job become a complete overhaul to bring the PC up to modern standards on the cheap.

The integrated graphics on the new motherboard could provide widescreen resolutions, so I decided against buying a graphics card after all. Part by part the computer was changed until not a single original component was left - it was like Trigger's broom.

Along the way I came to the conclusion that the tower case was unnecessarily large and unsightly, so that was swapped for a slightly less visually offensive case as a stopgap measure. Research threw up HTPC cases - boxes that resembled home theatre equipment, a solution which would have been perfect were it not for the high prices such cases command.

"Fuck that", I thought to myself, "I'll knock one up from a knackered CD player, DVD player or VCR instead." As none were to hand I procured a faulty old Sony CD player for £10, which was subsequently gutted - after which I realised that the ATX PSU I had paid £10 for was too large and that the other PC compenents would be unable to sit flush over the raised bumps in the base. Fuck, that's £20 seemingly wasted.

At this point I purchased an mATX power supply, which turned out to be still too big for the case, unless it underwent surgery to make it fit. If the bumps in the case were removed, everything should have just about fit.

I took a break from parts-buying and set about upgrading the Operating System. Windows XP Home Edition worked fine, however my components could run a 64-bit OS and Windows 7 had just been launched, which for a student would cost only £30.

Windows 7's Aero interface chugged a bit on the integrated graphics, and the picture distortion caused by the VGA cable had been annoying me for some time. This would not do, I needed a graphics card.

And we come full circle, only this time I could buy a PCI Express graphics card, and a more powerful one at that as prices had come down in the year since I first started looking at graphics cards.

Although I bought a low profile card, it turns out this would get in the way of the DVDRW drive in the Sony CD player case, so I have officially wasted my money on the case. I am currently searching for a broken CD player, DVD player or VCR large enough to accommodate my PC's innards.

After over a year this project still remains unfinished. For those who are interested, the PC's specs are as follows (not a powerhouse by any means);

Gigabyte GA945GCM S2L Motherboard,
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8gHz,
1x 2GB DDR2 667 RAM,
ATI Radeon HD4350 512MB PCI Express graphics card (passively cooled, low profile),
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 250GB SATA hard drive (with an Apple logo on it, I wonder if the HDD burns as it runs Windows, akin to holding a crucifix to a vampire?),
Sony DRU-870S SATA DVDRW drive.
Windows 7 Professional x64.

Other projects include futile attempts to learn to play guitar, and my short lived effort to teach myself to write with my left hand in a bid to become ambidextrous. That project only lasted about a week, and at the end my left handed scrawlings were still abysmal, which when you consider how my right handed scrawlings resemble most peoples non-dominant handwriting the situation becomes all the more pitiful.

Also, like many of you I often leave videogames unfinished, going as far back as Turrican on the Amiga. Rather than grabbing a joystick and frantically tugging away to finally beat such unfinished videogames, I more often get sidetracked and grab my own joystick, frantically tug away and beat it to relieve gentlemanly frustrations.
( R.Soul hmmm, Mon 28 Jun 2010, 15:05, 38 replies)

Building that configuration now wont be very wise.
Mostly because you can get better components for the same price. Also, don't take windows. Just install Linux. If you really cannot use it, then torrent windows. Not worth paying for.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Mon 28 Jun 2010, 15:41, closed)

I'm rather skint at the moment, so I won't be replacing any of those components any time soon, plus the PC seems to run quite well for most tasks as it is.

I may look into Linux in the future though to satisfy my curiosity.
( R.Soul hmmm, Mon 28 Jun 2010, 16:15, closed)

You
won't be sorry.

Depending on the Distro, it'll turn old hardware back into a respectable, usable machine once again.

I use Xubuntu on my older machines, and they run brilliantly - whereas, the Windows equiv. would have stalled or at least started grinding to a halt.

e.g. I have an old Dell Optorex (?) - It's a Celeron 850mhz with 512 meg of RAM with a Matrox Millenium (it's THAT old). I use it to stream MythTV to. It can handle two 720p streams (one Window-in-Window) whilst torrenting stuff in the background quite happily.

With Windows on the same box, I was struggling to get a letter written using Word 2000.
(dchurch bah, Mon 28 Jun 2010, 16:44, closed)

Comparing a pared-down, tweaked, and fairly new linux distro to an elderly bog-standard windoze installation isn't really fair. Install a copy of TinyXP, make the page static, defrag it, move it to the outside of the disk (make a partition here if it's easier), defrag everything else, kill the eyecandy, kill any pointless TSRs, disable crappy resource-hogging services such as indexing and system restore, install Open Office rather than the 10year old MS offering - and you have something lightweight, fast, and stable. I've had it running perfectly well on low-end P3s with 128mb sdram.

I won't say one word against linux - but until it gains better support for games, it'll never make it onto my main PC (Core i5 750 (lynnfield), Asus P7P55D, 4gb 1600mhz ddr3, WD750gb black hdd, hd4870 1gb, win7 pro 64bit - runs like a charm).
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 28 Jun 2010, 23:34, closed)

True that linux
doesn't have as many games as for windows. But that is only because the audience of the games mostly use windows and one or two other small factors.

Mac operating systems are the best at GUI and *nix is the best for programming. Windows doesn't stand a chance but what I hate the most about it is Microsoft trying to justify themselves after ripping off most of the features from Mac OS X.

Recently I read this article that said that Microsoft is trying to rip of linux apt-get and aptitude by having a software repository. This will utterly fail but again, proves that they're just using others' ideas.

I have dual boot windows on my desktop with debian linux (kubuntu release for filesystem compatibility) and I haven't logged into windows in a long time. It's a core i7 bloomfield with 4 megs 1.6 GHz DDR3, 2x Nvidia SLi 9800 GTX+ and I am sure wine can run any game smoothly.

Btw, my old 166 MHz Pentium III with 32 mb ram and 1 mb graphics card still runs linux without a problem.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 7:27, closed)

I
have to disagree with the "Best for programming" comment.

It depends what you want to achieve. If you want fast development in an environment that people are familiar with then I think dot net wins hands down - C# and even VB are nice easy to use and powerful programming languages.

There's nothing that comes close for RAD for Linux.

I'm no Windows fanboy, but MS do know how to produce decent languages - although this will probably be shot down for not 'real' programming, it doesn't matter a tiny bit to the business that wants the program written - they just want it to work, and usually to work in Windows, they couldn't care less if you have avoided the use of pointers or other unmanaged programming language features, they want to be able to click a button on a screen and have something happen.

Having said that, at home I use Python and GTK+ - obviously I could use Mono, but don't.

I used to have a dual boot with Windows too, but realised that I hadn't touched it for 9 months due it taking so long to boot etc... when all I wanted to do was pick up a few emails, so reclaimed the HDD.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 7:34, closed)

Ofcourse visual studio
is something that microsoft can be proud of. I don't do VB or .NET so I stick to linux for programming. In my experience I find using Linux GCC better than going for Cygwin in windows. Javascript and Java (core) performance, I don't know but I'd like to think they're faster on linux. Web-hosts don't like javascript pages because it hogs a lot of their resources I guess, which is why I think linux is better for that too.

Even for php, installing everything and configuration is much easier in linux.

I heard that VB is like really simple, with code that ordinary people can read and understand and I'll look into it sometime.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 8:25, closed)

I think
that used to be true of VB before it went *true* OO.

I've never been a fan of Java - specifically J2EE for the reasons you specify,although I was running this on Solaris, it was still a huge hog.

C# is like C and Java mixed - C in as much as you can pretty much do anything you like, including an in-line assembler if you want it - and Java as it's compiled down for a VM, in this case the dot net framework.

Like I say, at home I generally use Python as quite a lot of the stuff I do there is quite high level - switching switches to open doors, turn lights on etc...

The reason I went to dot net was simply for the employment value - there were more jobs around in my area for those skills than for C++ or ASM programming, and/or indeed anything to do with Linux (which is of course what I use at home exclusively these days).

...and yes, I'm with you on the PHP - generally I use gedit as I can connect it directly (or at least it looks that way to the user) to the server and simply click 'save' when I want it to update remotely.

Remotely (ssh) I use Joe['s own editor] which is a bit like nano, but with some really cool little features.

You can get a LAMP server up and running from scratch in less than 30 mins - which is bloody fantastic. Try doing the same with WAMP - you'll be there all week.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:27, closed)

True
I set up MAMP and LAMP and each only took me like 10 minutes to set up, more for the downloading and stuff yeah.

apt-get is fantastic.

Btw, yeah your home sounds epic (talking about the DIY stuff), I wanted to do something like that but I always run out of motivation. Maybe I'll take some ideas from you and get it done.

But what do think? Python or C for the controls? I know both, but I am better at the latter.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:32, closed)

Either....or....
I use python simply because I don't have to compile it every time I make a change - which is frequently, and I can just open the file over SSH and change it without a lot of grief.

Although C would most likely be fine as well - I hear socket programming is a nightmare though, and in Python that's all done for you.

I did initially write the touch screen interface in C#, but have since rewritten it using GTK+ as I came home one night to see someone remotely controlling the machine! (It was the only Windows box on the network, and to be honest, after so many years of not having to worry about virus protection etc... I just got lazy. Rather than go back to that nightmare of updating patches/virus protection/spyware etc... I figured I'd install Linux on the box and rewrite the front end. I generally wrote all the *grunt* work as webservices in PHP, so it really was just a matter of placing buttons on the screen in a different language).
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 13:40, closed)

Ah yeah security
is best with *nix systems.

Well, I have only done socket programming in Java before, but it hogs too much resources so I'll stick to C I guess. Or Python if I can get better at it.

Thanks anyway.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Wed 30 Jun 2010, 12:03, closed)

People
often say "there's no support for games in Linux".

I don't understand how many games a person needs.

You can run most DirectX games in Linux, even though they were written for Windows - I've yet to come across one that doesn't work very well. Although, I grant you, some years ago getting Half-Life 2 up and running was a bit of a pig, but once installed it would run beautifully.

Natively, there's FlightGear, Tremulous, Alien Arena, Chromium, TORCS, Warsow, Urban Terror, RtCW, Quake Wars, Scorched Earth 3D, Doom3 (my favourite)....the list is huge.

...and to be fair, I also installed Win7 on the box as well as XP (which is the version that this box was intended for according to the sticker on the front), as apparently this 'works faster with older hardware' (from MS website).

No.it.fucking.doesn't.

I'm forced to use Win7 at work, and in the last 6 months I've had to completely reinstall twice. I'm going to have to do it again today when I get there due to MS's own Development suite crashing nearly every time you try to edit a user control. (this isn't me being fickle - I paid the 200 quid!!! to get MS to fix their own crap thinking mistakenly that their own software would work on their latest OS, to be told that the answer was to reinstall Windows 7 - again!)

Of course, using TinyXP is completely illegal.

/rant.

EDIT: Just found this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_gaming
It's a bit out of date, but it gives you some idea.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 7:30, closed)

I dipped my toe into Linux (ubuntu)
which did reinvigorate my old machine. It was absolutely brilliant, and somehow the wireless connection actually worked BETTER than the Windows effort.

However - I appreciate that Ubuntu could play SOME games. But gamers want specific games, they want them to run first time and they want them NOW. I couldn't play Football Manager 10, which is like one of the games I pump most hours into.

I have to say - if you're a big gamer then Linux just will not do. But for all other PC users, linux is cheap *edit - free!!* and probably better than Windows. Looks really swish too!
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:20, closed)

Yeah
fair point.

Although there must have been an equivilent of football manager? (maybe)
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:27, closed)

Well I'm afraid not really
It's the pinnacle of Football Managers *sims" and nothing else will do. I suspect there are other games in other fields where only the best is worth playing - the latest Call of Duty, the upcoming Starcraft, the FIFA games, etc.

I just don't see why it can't be simpler for games to run on Linux. Or is the onus on the game developer?
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:38, closed)

Yeah
nail on the head - it's the developers really.

There is something called play4linux (or similar) that you can install, and I'm told 99% of Windows games will then run - at the moment, I think it's about 60% of the good ones will run under Wine.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:53, closed)

Sounds alright
I've only recently purchased a good spec machine that has Windows 7 on it so I probably won't be changing anything for a few years at least. But it's nice to know there are other options and were it not for the games Linux would be my first choice. I hope it gets better.
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:58, closed)

I
don't really play games all that much (never seem to have the time any more), so it was the obvious choice for me.

You can't really blame the devs though - to be honest, they want to maximise their profits, so of course would go for the most popular platform.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:08, closed)

linux & games
I'm an avid Linux user and also a hardcore gamer, and do have to admit that due to DirectX (and micro$haft screwing gamers over by tricking devs into using it when OpenGL is so much better) it is hard to get games to run well on Linux.

Solution? I just use dual boot, it takes me 20 seconds to reboot to windows (because there is nothing installed on it except games), and then play whatever it is that takes my interest (currently its King Arthur: The role playing game).

One day maybe the tides will change and I can ditch windoze for good, but for now that seems to be the best result.
(Panda_z is sweating like a chav in dixons, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 12:21, closed)

DirectX
...is not a bad idea, and not really a like-for-like comparison with OpenGL.
Initially it was a protection issue to stop virus(es?) getting to the hardware with a hardware protection layer. Of course, game programmers complained that they couldn't access the video hardware directly when they needed to if it was to be written for Windows (dos would allow this), so M$ came up with "Direct Access (X) to hardware" - "make the call to the hardware you want and we'll send it on for you" - now, it's become a lot more than that.

Of course, if you write for DirectX (or XNA as it's called now I think) then it's a much easier job to port to the Xbox, and thus open your market up a fair bit.

OpenGL is much easier IMO than dealing with DirectX, but that's probably my mindset and not theirs.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 13:52, closed)

Yes its hard to compare the 2 as there are huge differences if you are a developer, and I'm sure they could have made XboX more OpenGL compliant if they wanted to, but its not in their best interests to do so.

Good article on the benefits of OpenGL;

blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
(Panda_z is sweating like a chav in dixons, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 14:00, closed)

Nice article
kept me busy!
(dchurch bah, Wed 30 Jun 2010, 7:11, closed)

Dual boot is a lot of faffing around
considering Windows 7 UI is actually pretty bearable for the casual internet user / gamer like me.

Once this PC dies a little and becomes out of date I think I'll go dual boot and get involved again with linux..
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 16:28, closed)

I wouldn't say there's *no* support
but I like - by way of example - L4D2. I'm sure the Linux games are very good, but they won't get me my fix of co-op survival zombie bashing, unless I drop my framerate to Powerpoint speeds by running it in an emulator. Last night, because I was bored, I bought Starwars: The Force Unleashed from Steam for the grand total of three quid. Not a fantastic game, but easy, cheap, and available.

Win7 tends work faster than *Vista* on the same hardware. No-one's suggested it can outperform XP in most real-world tasks - generally, it can't (http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/windows-xp-vs-vista-vs-7/). That said, it does have its nice points; the Media Centre is intuitive and very competent, the UI is generally pleasant, and it's stable.

Different tools for different requirements - I've never really understood the rabid fanboi ranting on the subject. I'm not too bothered which OS you choose to use - if it does the job for you, excellent. But the idea that windows is unremittingly and irredeemably awful, whilst Linux is flawlessly compiled from love and kittens, is outdated and wrong.

EDIT: as it happens, I have at various points in time run various flavours of Linux on various machines (currently, just bt3 on a netbook). In many cases, it's by far the better choice than Windows - but not, for my requirements, on my main machine.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:25, closed)

"if it does the job for you, excellent. But the idea that windows is unremittingly and irredeemably awful, whilst Linux is flawlessly compiled from love and kittens, is outdated and wrong."

Agreed, although I cannot get on with the Win7 (and Vista) UI. Things seem to be hidden from you for no real reason.

e.g. The MRU documents list in Win7 is gone. As a developer where I may be using the same documents for weeks if not months this was very useful. I cannot find anywhere where I can turn it back on.

In contrast, in Linux, I can turn anything on and off as I wish, and it's generally all in the same place(s). If it isn't, I could add it myself.

I think it's the fact that I have to pay for an OS that is generally unstable - I've had Win7 blue (well black) screen on me a few times - specifically when trying to interface with hardware (which is my job) and that takes an age to set up (admittedly, Win7 is a bit quicker than XP/Vista), and then I have to download and install a huge host of 'updates'.

It just chokes in the throat a bit, after having parted with money for it.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:32, closed)

well :P
taskbar, properties, start menu, customize, check the 'recent idems' box - you now have them back! I think they were removed by default because too many hamfisted husbands had their porn stash accidentally revealed.

Anyway, I don't want windows to stop going wrong - it'd take a large chunk out of my income :)
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:44, closed)

Ahh dude!
I owe you a beer!

Thanks for that - I couldn't see the wood for trees!
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 13:42, closed)

No worries
I had a similar problem completely overlooking 'open folder location' in the new search

Also, re things being hidden from you - have a look at 'godmode'. Just about everything is presented in one very easy-to-use page.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 20:20, closed)

Hmmm
will google that tomorrow.

(very reminicent of Doom ;-) )
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 20:44, closed)

Aye
It's nothing more than a shortcut, really - nothing to download - but the resulting agrgeagation of useful stuff saves hours of finding out where MS has hidden stuff. I named mine 'noclip' rather than godmode, because I'm sad.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 22:11, closed)

I never really understood what all the UI ranting was about with Vista and win7
Its like, you've got a computer and its job is to get your work done and not sit there simply all fucking pretty acting like a slut. You want to do that? Aw no you may be a virus, click here, are you sure? FFS.

Windows systems were not built to be as stable or secure as *nix systems. Microsoft's engineers are piling security stuff on top of each other rather than fix the core which would be very tedious. I have never seen a linux person complain about not having administrative rights, stuff like that. True some people complain that they cannot log in as root but a normal person logging in as root is pure stupidity. root is a weird account.

If I use windows, I either use XP or disable all the fancy shite before using vista/win 7.

The UI affects those with low memory/old graphics cards so they'll experience frequent hangs and such but at the same time GNOME running on the same machine works flawlessly.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:42, closed)

again,
I wouldn't for a moment question your decision to run Linux - it's been the right choice for some of my machines, and if it's the right choice for yours, fantastic.

It is not, however, the right choice for my relatively high-end main machine, which I paid a fair amount of cash for in order for it to be able to play the one or two games I actually enjoy. I quite like Aero, now (disliked it intensely at first), and the win7 UAC is far less intrusive than Vista. If I couldn't cope with it, I'd turn it off.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:47, closed)

I am not telling you to run linux
yeah, its your choice. But just out of curiosity, which two games?
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:49, closed)

At the moment,
Left4Dead 1 and 2.

Before that, counter strike source, before that, Quake2, before that, worms armageddon (best game of all time, I reckon). I'm not a huge gamer, don't take to it particularly well, and prefer to keep it to one or two rather than flitting around and being depressingly bad at all of them.

That said, I did download Serious Sam HD 1&2, Ghostbusters, and Starwars: Force Unleased over the weekend - came to 15 quid in total, I think...
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:53, closed)

Hearing all that makes me want to start gaming again
but I don't have enough time. Still, I have finished Left4Dead, played CS on garena, and a bit of warcraft III this year.

A couple of years before I used to game quite a lot, finished a lot of games like Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights II, San Andreas and such. My interest is in RPG's.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:57, closed)

I find RPGs too immersive - or, more accurately, the wife does. Other things tend to get slightly neglected...

A bit of Team VS L4D2 is a good way to end the day; I don't tend to play much of anything single player, as I like the petty satisfaction of knowing someone, somewhere, is getting quite pissed off about me shooting them in the head/eating their brains. It's a really well-thought-out game for multiplayer - very balanced. Should give it a go.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 11:01, closed)

Yeah I like the game
but I have not played it multiplayer.

I'll try sometime.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Wed 30 Jun 2010, 12:05, closed)

I think
you've sparked the most polite and least childish conversation with regards to the age old Linux vs Windows debate that I have ever seen.

Usually it degenerates into a slagging match; so well done you!
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 13:56, closed)