Computer put together and OS Installed

I've tested and installed my computer over the last few days. It took me a good few days as I don't have much spare time besides my work. This due to the fact that I go by bike (20KM from work to home) and that takes a good 45 minutes i'd say.

However, I always loved tinkering/building with computer hardware so coming home to an unbuild computer is pretty good on me. This time everything went fine, no DOA parts nor did anything show any sign of incompatibility during the install of different distro's. There was one thing though. The Comrade, the Bitfenix case doesn't house the Mugen 4 very well.

The Mugen 4 fits, however it's a very tight fit and I recommend not to buy the Comrade in combination with the Mugen. I just put this up here so it might help others.

Why?
It CAN be made to work, but your better off saving yourself a headache by buying a smaller block. The screws on the Motherboard of my Extreme3 where blocked off. The position of the screw was in it's ideal location, meaning you will find a screwhole pretty much on every motherboard to where it was on the Extreme3(my specific case) on top of that you will have to tighten the Mugen very tight(wich I didn't bother to try) to get it to fit under the case sidepanel. This will most likely result in the motherboard flexing the way it shouldn't.

It's a super tight fit and decided in the end not to install the block. A sad thing that I coudn't install that block but happy that the computer itself works. I've build quite some computers for family and friends, even carefully checked online if the parts fitted together but coudn't find the specific combo of the Comrade and the Mugen on tech / build websites I know. It was a risk I had to take and in the end it bit me in the butt.

The OS, after trying Debian and Mint will still stay Ubuntu after all. I've been using Ubuntu for solid months on end now at work. Love it, easy to use and I know my way around it by now.

This all was a very interesting experience, as is building any PC. A fun little project that kept me busy for a good month.

Migration to Linux

At work we,or at least, I am migrating to Linux for the better. As a web developer my duty is to work on the platform where our websites and applications are going to run on. Thus migrating. I've got little experience with Linux, yet what I have with it, is good. I've been meaning to take this step for a long time. On my personal machine it will still have to hold out for a few more months or so as the only thing holding me back is Steam and support for hardware.

I've tried flavors such as Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and Arch to get a taste of what the wonderfull world of GNU/Linux has to offer for a developer / gamer like me. Fact is, I would still like to game and like my OS to be as maintainence free as possible. Ubuntu or Debian would take my preference. In my place of work, Ubuntu is proudly replacing my Windows 8 machine. On top of that, I've prepared myself for years to get to know open-source variants of their counterparts on Windows already. Gimp is my Photoshop. OpenOffice is my MS Office. I've been steaming myself ready for this moment.

Im really exited to take this step ( Win8 to Ubuntu / Debian maby. ) as migrating from Win7 to Win8 was horrible. I've gotten to know the bug that make Win8. For example shutting down. Win8 has NEVER shut down properly. It always asks to forcefully shutdown, and when given the command to do so, still doesn't shutdown.

The start menu, when you search for programs, it often, in mistake starts a program I don't need nor want on Windows 8. That takes us to another point. Some programs are proprietary. IE, wich we need, cannot be uninstalled nor downgraded without taking the nessesary backdoor steps. Along with a huge list of default programs such as your PDF viewer and such. Even the PDF viewer itself is brackisch as it reads the MS version of PDF encoding wich is slightly different than the Open or Adobe version of pdf encoding. Is discovered that when generating PDF files for a client project.

My main, or only heldback is game and hardware support. I've got a camera setup to where I've got hardware that can record old camera tapes. No support on Linux. I really expected this, yet shame. Then games. Videocards have pretty much no support and specially the newer models. Then games, they often NEED DirectX to run. I hate it. Awesomenauts and dozen of indie games SUPPORT OpenGL and this is really a good move. They also have the default setting to OpenGL, wich is a kick to the nuts for DirectX HAHA!

I've got about ~500 games on Steam. I really want to play at least half of them on Linux. Looking at that list, it ain't gunna last long anymore untill I can. When I make this change, it's going to be forever. Windows is going in the bin in my household. If I can get my mom to use Linux, then I will take that chance. If I can get my brother to use it, I will take that chance.

GNU/Linux is something that will change the world and computer technology. We knew this when it started and now it is catching up. Great thing!

~ Rob