My time for a new pc is coming, it’ll either be a Dell Precision T3610 (4-core Xeon, NVidia K4000) if I choose to focus the hardware power on 3d like Blender or a Dell Alienware Aurora (P i7 extreme, NVidia GTX 690) if I choose to focus more on 2d with Krita, Gimp and MyPaint. I can do either with either of the PC but one works better for one thing than the other.
For both of these PC I can choose either Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8. It’ll come pre-installed and I’ll ask for an installation DVD, it’ll also come with 2 hdd, on one, the Windows OS will be installed, the other is the where Suse will be installed.
I read trough another thread about a new PC but the difference is that this person is ordering a PC with no OS pre-installed and from another manufacturer.
So, I like to know if I may find any trouble installing Suse on the secondary HDD (so the Windows Hdd is not touched) and of course, if any had any experience with the proprietary driver for either the NVidia k4000 or the GTX-690 (4GB) due to my bad experience with the ATI Radeon 4670.
I was planning to make the root, swap and home partitions on the secondary hdd from windows, leave it un-formatted so the Suse installation does that, as I usually do when I have installed my current Dell , first with WW2k and Suse 10.2, later WXP with current Suse.
Anything to be aware of would be very appreciated.
Avoid Alienware for Linux those machines often have cutting edge hardware that there is no Linux driver for. It can make things hard to install.
A New Machine will have EFI BIOS most likely so you should read up on that.
It is possible to install on a seperate disk but there will need to be some part of the install that will go to the efi/boot partition to allow booting to Linux.
I can’t advise on the computer. But it’s probably a good idea to follow gogalthorp’s advice and avoid alienware.
I have a Dell Inspiron 660 that I purchased last year with Win8. I added a second hard drive, and installed opensuse there. It is the computer that I am using now.
If the BIOS is similar to what I have, then you will run into some problems with UEFI. But they are relatively minor problems. Just start a thread here if you need help with them. I cannot guarantee the the BIOS will be similar.
I considered buying another Dell this year. They were offering a choice of Win7 or Win8.1, as I recall. According to the fine print, if you bought with Win7, then they were actually providing you with a system that is licensed for Win 8.1 pro. It is part of the pro license, that you can use the same license for Win 7, so they were installing the Win 7, and giving you install media for the Win 8.1 if you wanted to switch. I’m guessing that they will be doing something similar for what you are considering. Again, according to the fine print, if you ordered with Win7, the BIOS would be switched to Legacy mode and the disk partitioned as an MBR disk. If you wanted to install Win8, you would need to switch the BIOS to UEFI mode, and repartition the disk as GPT.
And yes, I know that gets complicated. As long as you are using a separate drive for opensuse, it should not be a big problem. You could partition the opensuse drive with GPT, but still have it boot in legacy mode. Then, if you install Win8 and go with UEFI, it would not be too hard to switch opensuse over without a reinstall. Again, feel free to open a suitably titled thread here if you run into any of these issues.
Thank you for the responses, I’ve taken notes on the BIOS info regarding w7 and w8, will read on UEFI BIOS setting, it’s relieving to hear that if I install Suse on another hard drive that it’ll be less complicated and perhaps with no trouble. I still have time to decide on wich model but with what was mentioned about Alienware, now the Precision model has the lead.