Fancy New Computer: Will it work with linux?

[Joel Hammer]

Well, I am buying a new computer for my college son, since he says it hurts
his back to carry his laptop back and forth to school (he has to walk 4 or 5
city blocks). So, I am bidding on the following machine on eBay. It sounds
nice, but I would like someone to explain a couple of items to me.

======New fancy computer specifications=================
Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz 

533 MHz System Bus Speed Socket 478 
Hyper Pipelined Technology
NEW 512k Advanced L2 Advanced Transfer Cache!!
128 Bit Enhanced Floating Point Unit
Advanced Dynamic Execution

Motherboard 
Pentium 4 Motherboard

SiS? 645DX & SiS? 962L chipset
Integrated USB 2.0
ATX P4S5A/DX Motherboard
2 DDR Slots, 2 SDRAM Slots, UDMA 100
2 USB Ports in Back, 2 USB Ports in Front
1 Parallel/Printer Port, 2 Serial Ports
USB 2.0 Ready!

Memory
512MB PC2700 DDR RAM 333MHz 
Lifetime Warranty
168-Pin DIMM
===========End of new fancy computer specifications====================

1.  How do they gave a bus speed of 533 (or is that a clock speed?). They seem to be
taking the 133 bus speed and multiplying it by 4. What's going on?

2. What's with this DDR RAM 333 MHz stuff.

3. They mention, somewhere, chip drivers supplied by SiS for windows XP.
Why are they needed?

I have lost touch with the leading edge$$ of desktop computer technology,
ever since getting children. I am asking these question in part because
I would like to know if the "advanced" features of this computer can
be used in linux. Most of my computers in the house are ancient AT
boxes running linux (I have one Athlon Firebird, the rest are made from
scraps.) I have given up the idea of trying to buy AT motherboards and
will replace some of these boxes soon. I might try getting more of these
great sounding computers if they can run linux effectively.


Thanks,

Joel