Ultimate Linux Box

My "ultimate GNU/Linux box," if we're talking a traditional desktop, is actually quite vanilla. It'd be a small Shuttle case or something similar, with the following hardware:

VIA C7 CPU, 2GHz
2GB DRAM (3GB if the mobo supports it)
Solid-state hard disk, at least 100GB (yep, they exist now)
Thin-line DVD/CD burner/reader
USB keyboard/mouse
Gig-E copper (yes, I know, very standard now)
Ralink or Realtek wireless
19" LCD video or larger
Any video chipset for which Free Software accelerated drivers exist today

Some might say, "hey, that's not exactly high-powered! What about the l33t gamerz?" Valid question. My answer to that is as follows:

This box is perfect for what the vast majority of people want to do with a computer. That means Web surfing, online shopping, office productivity (OpenOffice.org- or KOffice-type stuff), ripping some MP3's--normal stuff. And further, you can easily power the entire thing, including the display, on a small solar array. A single 150W panel will do it. The large DRAM will help keep you off of the solid-state hard disk.

Additionally, such a box would be quite affordable. That means more GNU/Linux boxes sold, not just in the US/Europe/Japan, but also in China, India, Latin America, and Africa.

The "l33t gamer," by contrast, is going to have the latest Quad-Core Extreme CPU, dual $500 video boards, etc. Not cheap, and not low-power. Can't run that on a 150W solar panel. Sure, such a powerhouse is great, no doubt, but you'd need at least 500W to power such a beast, and you're talking well into the four figures.

--TP

For the Ultimate Linux Box I'd want a quad processor motherboard with four AMD quadcore Opterons (the new B3 stepping), a high-end video card or two preferably ATI if I were confident that they'll continue to rapidly improve their Linux drivers, as much RAM as I could cram into it, four Raptors in RAID0+1 for programs and several terabyte drives in RAID6 for data, 3Ware PCIe SATA RAID controller for that, watercooling for quiet, a big aluminum case so I could move the box without a forklift, two 26" LCD monitors, a good Logitech keyboard and laser mouse, a good (not Creative) soundcard, a LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner, Nero Linux 3 to go with that burner, PC Power & Cooling's biggest power supply, and a big APC SmartUPS to defend it all. Oh, and a FTTH Internet connection to plug it into. That way I could do insanely fast program compiles, run game servers, play games, render video, and basically do whatever the frack I want with ease.

What I'd pay for if I had the money: probably just a Phenom 9850 BE CPU, 8GB DDR2-1066 RAM, an AMD 790FX chipset motherboard with SB700 southbridge (6 SATA ports) and decent onboard audio, a Radeon 3870 X2 video card, maybe water cooling for quiet and overclocking, a decent aluminum case, a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 power supply, a Raptor for the boot drive and one or two pairs of 750GB SATA drives RAID1 mirrored for data, that LG Blu-ray burner, an APC SmartUPS, one 26" LCD monitor, a good Logitech keyboard and laser mouse, and I'd buy FTTH Internet if AT&T would get a clue and understand that fiber to a box a kilometer from home is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Oh, and a HDTV tuner.

to me the ultimate linux box means:

a machine that runs a 100% compatible coreboot as bios, with double bios for backup, an ultra high memory (8gb would be enough), a double amd am2 double core processor (not quad) and with 300mbit/s sataII controller. also it would use a great deal of hw sensors and be full acpi compliant to reduce at best the power consumption when not needed, and as system would use an ultra customized and stable gentoo.
with this you'd be able to use the box for whatever you'd want.

Yes, what is ultimate really depends on what you need...

For example, I am a computer science (natural language) researcher. I need three kinds of machines/devices:

1) Ultimate computation device: high-speed, multi-cpu, high-memory device with fast networking that I can buy 100 (or 1000) of, network together and run distributed models of computation on

2) Ultimate desktop device: a comfortable machine that I can use to accomplish my everyday work (word processing/writing, experiment design and monitoring, searching the web for relevant info -- and reading it, mostly in web pages or pdf). This needs a big monitor and access to my network above

3) Ultimate portable device: a small (as small as possible) machine that I can use while on the go for as many of the same purposes as my #2 machine as possible, but in a very light and small (easy to carry) package, with good wireless networking. Think Nokia n810 or eeePC type device. Good battery life (8+ hours) would be great. Also being able to do presentations from it (OO.o impress) and quick editing of the same would be great.

If machine type #3 is good enough, I guess I don't need a type #2 machine.

Well, I'd say all except 2 above are reality, the brain implant can wait.... for now lol but I'd say the single least most attractive market for Linux to completely decimate any other OS, is to have some sort of Ultimate Gaming situation. Blow all others out with game performance and overtake the desktop sticking point and take the market by storm. So that is basically because I believe Linux is already everything but that anyway, so, we need to complete its usage in that lacking area. If it's what we are lacking, it's what we need to create, to make the OS a truly Ultimate Linux Box.

P.S. I triple boot sidux, Arch, and FreeBSD.