I am new to Linux, though not new to custom built PCs. My wife has given me the okay to spend some of our tax return to put together a new PC. I am hoping to learn some Linux as well as not compete over our one PC connected to the internet. My plan was to go with an ASUS motherboard, video card, 2GB RAM, DVD burner, 250GB hard drive (was thinking of doing a dual-boot with Windows XP on another partition), memory card reader, one of those 85% efficient power supply, and a 45W AMD dual-core processor. To connect to our wireless network I was considering a USB connected external device. The budget for this, plus monitor and case, is projected to be about $1,200.00 in tax refund.
My initial list of questions/concerns are:
I found that ASUS listed some driver download for Linux. In Windows I would know what to do with it. In Linux I do not. So what do I do?
What do I look for to make sure the hardware I choose is compatible with Linux?
To keep things simple for my wife, I was thinking of going with KDE. Is this a good choice?
Our children are still very young but it won't be long before they will want to play on the computer. Any advice on setup that might make my life easier with the kids accessing the PC over the next decade?
And thinking of children, is there any quick options to "lock" a Linux PC? In Windows XP, I just have to press the Window+L on the keyboard when our little two year old boy comes near to prevent him from using my account with my access to do anything (logging off and shutting down in Windows takes too long as little boys can be very quick).
So far I am looking at:
motherboard: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
processor: AMD Athlon X2 2.1GHz 45W Dual-Core
I know that eats up a bit of the initial budget. I was hoping that a good backbone would give me future flexibility.
Any suggestions or help with the setup of my first Linux machine would be greatly appreciated.
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