My current PC is about 11 years old. It is a custom machine. That is the way I like. I built it “cutting edge”.
It is time for a new machine (as if that isn’t obvious). My old machine is running Win7. (I know about the security risks, etc.) Hence, why it is time to build a new machine (as well as hardware failures, because it is old). My concern is that I will assemble the components that I like and think are very good, and then I will have driver problems. I am what I would classify as a first-level-intermediate Linux user.
What I am asking is for suggestions on hardware to get/or avoid. I like ASUS M/B. As graphics cards are hard to come by, I don’t know what I will end up with. (I am thinking of Linus Torvalds feelings about NVIDIA).
I would love to know the community’s thoughts, and think this can be an interesting conversation.
In case it isn’t obvious, this is about a daily driver PC. I do web surfing, email, Office apps, VMs (so yeah, I need some power), I will run Flight Gear, GIMP, Inkscape, etc.
I am a System Admin for work, so I like to tinker.
Details are less at brand and more at component level. Some models/versions do have known issues (although I can’t name any).
NVidia … I’ve primarily used NVidia despite that company’s policies. The open source Nouveau driver included in EL8 is decent (but NVidia’s own binary blob is better).
Intel IGP is less powerful; couple years ago it did fail to support OpenGL application. That was with EL7.
We had ATI Radeon 8500s some two decades ago, although with commercial third-party drivers. No experience with AMD.
Support for Intel Alder Lake CPUs (and other really new components) depend on Red Hat backporting features to EL8’s kernel and/or device vendors providing kernel modules for EL8 kernels. (The EL 8.5’s kernel does have some support for Alder Lakes, but not sure how complete.) Personally, I’m considering AMD (but without immediate need).
A problem you are likely to run into if you get the newest components is that some of them might not be properly supported yet, particularly with Rocky Linux which doesn’t use cutting edge Kernels, as it is more centered towards stability. With Distro’s like Debian Testing, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo etc., things are more likely to run, or easier to get running.
As for nVidia, On PC’s running nVidia GPU’s I’ve been using the nouveau + mesa drivers & haven’t run into any problems. Often the performance is even better than when you use nVidia’s own drivers.
For your use case, as other have said, I’d avoid hardware that is “too new”. It’s worth looking at AMD as well as Intel, and avoid gaming boards. For graphics cards, consider AMD, because the drivers are built-in, unlike nVidia.