Windows 8 (or, more likely, UEFI) warning.

[Ric Werme]

> I'm confused about UEFI.  So let me ask a couple of basic questions.

> At some point I need to modernize my computing platforms to get into
> GPU computing, so I'd like to get a lot more capable machine.  I am
> still harboring the fantasy that it is still possible to "assemble
> one's own desktop computer" running linux.  Is it still possible?  Or
> are those days over?

I recently built a SnowLinux (think Ubuntu with Gnome V2) system on an
ASUS P8H77-M PRO motherboard.  I chose it mainly because I saw some
reference somewhere to its RS232 and parallel port, both which I use).
It has a UEFI BIOS, but I pretty much ignored that and was able to set it
up as a pure Linux system with no trouble at all.  SSD main disk, USB3.0
everything, Intel i5 CPU (55w) idle power draw much less.

Antec Sonata case, like the old system.  Very, very quiet system.  Much
quieter than my laptop.

Software setup was easier than on my old system six years ago.  An
amazing amount of old crap is available through apt-get.  Some things I
thought I'd have to finally replace, like a convertor between
Asthon-Tate "xbase" files and MySQL is out there and has fixes for newer
libraries and stuff.

I was half hoping I'd have to replace some really old crap, but didn't.  Still
should.

-- 
ric at WermeNH.com                http://WermeNH.com/