Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pjmlp 641 days ago
I use UNIX systems since 1993, Linux since 1995, subscribed to Linux journal during its lifetime, do devops stuff, yet I gave up on the Linux Desktop other than Android and WebOS, which is debatable how Linux kernel matters in a managed OS userspace.

Windows in all private laptops, at work we also do macOS, with GNU/Linux on VMs when required.

There is always that one little thing that makes one spend a couple of weekends, last being a NUC whose EUFI couldn't get to read any distribution installed on the internal NVMe, only when used from external devices. Windows, no biggie, works both ways.

1 comments

That really depends on the hardware and the quality of its firmware.

Got myself some refurbished Lenovo M910q Tiny with 32GB RAM and low-power (35Watt) Core i5-7500t and 7700t (Kaby Lake).

Upped one with Mushkin Essentials to 64GB, put new SSDs (1x Sata, 1x NVME) into them, and they are all fucking flying,

with all crappy mitigations ON, while staying mostly silent.

Everything runs on them without problems. Even Hackintosh which I tried for fun.

Switching them on or off via keyboard, or resuming successfully from suspend?

No matter if to RAM or DISK, works every time.

Virtualisation? Covered.

2x 4K via DP? Covered. Though at 60Hz only. (Don't care, don't have faster screens anyways)

LAN could be more and faster, only 1x 1GB. (Don't care ATM)

Could even be expanded via 1x half-length and low-profile

PCIe 3 x8, depending on the card and PSU. (Don't care ATM)

Any relevant video-codec is HW-accellerated, for de- and encoding. No sweat.

It remains to be seen if they'll still get BIOS updates for any new vulerabilities,

but again, I don't really care.

Excellent (small) homelab or automation stuff.

Depending on configuration they come from 200 to 300USD/EUR.

Edit: This stuff https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/desktops-and-all...

...while staying @40° to 44°C during heavy browsing, streaming yt-audio in one tab with no tricks at all (like using ytp-dl -> mpv). Just one tab in FF-ESR with uBo playing along.

Bootup is @34°C, while room temperature is @19°~20°C.

Edit:

> Everything runs on them without problems...

Even https://genode.org/ from USB-Stick.

Never seen such clear booting, kernel-logs, DMESG regarding ACPI/DSDT, workarounds/quirks. Not even on a ThinkPad T60p or HP-Elitebook 2540p (which was very good for the time).