I reward myself for major things. Graduation, for instance! I'm finally getting my bachelor's degree. I'm finally finishing what I started.

So the gift I got for myself is a new home computer, built from parts: an Athlon 64 (3200+) on an Abit AV8 motherboard with a 250 GB SATA hard drive, 1 GB of RAM, a DVD writer, a simple 3D video card with composite video out (NVidia GeForce MX 4000), a PVR-250 TV tuner card, an optical scrollwheel mouse, a 19 inch LCD monitor, and a multifunction laser printer / scanner.

Almost everything turned out great. I tried hard to find components that are friendly to Linux. The AV8, with the Via K8T800 chipset, turned out to be quite Linux-friendly, as are the PVR-250 (using the ivtv module) and the SMC WiFi card (using the prism54 module.) NVidia drivers use a proprietary kernel module, but the module seems very reliable, so NVidia still feels like the best choice for 3D in Linux.

The one bad choice was the CPU heat sink / fan. I got a Thermaltake Silent Tower, which is perhaps the largest fan available for $50. I really wanted a quiet machine. Unfortunately, even though the CPU temperature consistently stayed under 48 C, the processor was unstable with the Silent Tower. Interestingly, none of the standard CPU diagnostic tools, such as cpuburn and memtest86, revealed any problems with the CPU. However, running bunzip2 in a loop caused frequent checksum failures. When I replaced the Silent Tower with the fan that came with the retail CPU, bunzip2 functioned perfectly. The Silent Tower seemed like a great idea, but it doesn't mount snugly to the CPU like the standard fan, and its size hinders airflow through the rest of the case. I'm going to have to return it. The standard heat sink isn't very loud, but still needs improvement.

Samsung advertises Linux compatibility for its SCX-4100 printer. Unfortunately, their installer made it very difficult to install the drivers. I spent hours trying to get their panicky kernel module to work--but it turned out that I didn't need the mfpport module anyway, since I connected the printer via USB, using the standard usblp module. I also realized I could ignore the insmod errors, and I didn't need Samsung's printer GUI; the driver uses CUPS, for which there are already several fine GUIs. I intend to explain in more detail at a later date how to set up this printer / scanner / copier, since it's still a great choice for home users. Here's one tip: set LogLevel debug in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, run /etc/init.d/cupsd restart, and watch /var/log/cups/error_log.

BTW, this whole setup cost about $1400 (yay newegg!), which is $200 less than what I paid for my first 233 MHz Pentium II eight years ago. It had an 11 GB hard drive, 32 MB of RAM (which I immediately upgraded to 96 MB), CD reader, a video card with no 3D acceleration, a stereo sound card, a two-button ball mouse, a 15" SVGA monitor, and a rather unreliable inkjet printer. The difference blows me away.