hardware questions, Ubuntu and Dell

[der.hans]

moin moin,

I'm wanting to do some virtual machine testing. I've grown tired
of getting old hardware to work, so I thought I'd use this as an excuse to
get a nice box with multi-core CPU(s) and at least a couple of GB of RAM.

So, I wandered over to the Dell website and search for both Linux and Ubuntu.

Both searches essentially bring up the following search results.

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=bsd&c=us&l=en&cs=04&k=ubuntu&cat=all

That recommended result that mentions Ubuntu brings up a page of boxen
with FreeDOS and RHEL on them. No Ubuntu :(.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/nseries?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=mn

What gives? Where are the boxen with support for Ubuntu?

I don't know anything about which CPU is better, etc. nowadays. They all
way outperform my needs, so it's generally irrelevant for me :).

With this box, though, I'd like something that'll handle well for
virtualization stuff, but not be a power hog.

I would generally prefer something from AMD. Would the Intel quad core
CPUs make a huge difference?

AMD ATHLONâ„¢ X2 6000+ (3.0GHZ,1MBX2) [add $240] 
AMD ATHLONâ„¢ X2 5600+ (2.8GHZ,1MBX2) [add $155] 
AMD ATHLONâ„¢ 5400B (2.8GHz,512KBX2) [add $130] 
AMD ATHLONâ„¢ 64 X2 5000+ (2.60GHz, 512KBx2) [add $95] 
AMD ATHLONâ„¢ X2 4400+ (2.3GHZ,512KBX2) [add $40] 
AMD ATHLONâ„¢ X2 4000+ (2.1GHZ,512KBX2) [Included in Price]

Those descriptions are less than helpful.

Any recommendations on the Dell offering or from a company that actually
offers Ubuntu?

Yeah, I won't be keeping their install, but I will back it up for
reference should something not work on my install. It would also be nice
to have a decent shot of actually getting support for Ubuntu.

ciao,

der.hans
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