21 ms·

My transition to an Ubuntu workstation

208 points by ryannjohnson 7y ago

proverbialbunny 7y ago
The problems you mention that you haven't solved are solvable. Are you looking for advice? I admit, I don't quite understand the reason for the opening post.
- bionicbits 7y ago
  The things I would miss most leaving Mac... 1. Uploading my Signature in Preview and being able to sign and edit PDF documents on any of my Apple Devices. 2. Screen rendering quality, on Mac everything seems to be sharper and more crisp than Linux on the same device. 3. Keynote. I so want a cross-platform replacement that is nearly as good. 4. iMessage integration with phone. I can send sms/iMessages from my Mac. But I am planning to switch anyways. As all these companies move to a "service model", I feel like I am only leasing my software, and tools that make the hardware work. Furthermore, it feels impossible to get under the hood anymore. Would love any advice or recommendations for the above.
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    For 2. That's funny, for me mac screens look like a blurry mess while Linux are the sharpest thing around with infinality patches. For 4. There is kde connect (you don't need to run kde to have it). Works only with android though afaik.
    - hiram112 7y ago
      Are infinality patches still being updated? Those were about the only reason I could tolerate a standard Centos or RHEL desktop, but I'd heard the maintainer 'disappeared' and nobody has picked them back up.
      - jcelerier 7y ago
        For some time there weren't but now someone is on it again : ``` aur/cairo-infinality 1.17.2+11+gdfe3aa6d8-1 (38) (0,00) aur/cairo-infinality-remix 1.17.2+17+g52a7c79fd-1 (6) (1,33) aur/fontconfig-infinality 2.13.1+12+g5f5ec56-1 (310) (0,00) aur/fontconfig-infinality-remix 2.13.1-2 (6) (1,33) aur/fontconfig-infinality-ultimate 2.13.1-1 [installed] (21) (0,00) aur/fonts-meta-base 1-2 [installed] (90) (0,09) aur/fonts-meta-extended-lt 3-1 [installed] (91) (0,09) aur/freetype2-demos-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-demos-infinality-remix 2.10.1-1 (7) (1,44) aur/freetype2-docs-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-infinality-remix 2.10.1-1 (7) (1,44) aur/freetype2-ultimate5 2.10.1-1 [installed] (12) (1,00) aur/gimp-font-rendering-fix 1-1 (5) (0,00) aur/grip-git 20120917-1 (37) (0,00) aur/jdk7-openjdk-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jdk8-openjdk-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/jre7-openjdk-headless-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jre7-openjdk-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jre8-openjdk-headless-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/jre8-openjdk-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/lib32-fontconfig-infinality 2.13.1+12+g5f5ec56-1 (0) (0,00) aur/lib32-fontconfig-infinality-ultimate 2.13.1-1 (3) (0,00) aur/lib32-freetype2-infinality-ultimate 2.9.1-2 (Out of Date) (9) (0,04) aur/ttf-dejavu-ib 2.37-2 (0) (0,00) ```
    - MarcScott 7y ago
      Also messages.google.com with Android. But with the obvious caveat that you're giving extra data to Google.
  - kam 7y ago
    For 1, Xournal can open PDFs, insert text, images, and annotations, and export back to PDF.
    - SanchoPanda 7y ago
      Libreoffice draw is amazing at PDF documents as well. It's something that feels like it should be advertised more, though I can imagine why they don't.
  - SanchoPanda 7y ago
    3 - libreoffice impress. For Numbers I like gnumeric over libreoffice Calc, but nothing really holds a candle to excel unfortunately.
    - bionicbits 7y ago
      Will check this out. Been decades since I last tried libre office. fingers crossed
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Calc actually works much better for spread sheets with odd character sets than excel does.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Preview is amazing. I’ve never used another PDF reader that didn’t make me sad every time I had to use it. It’s nice to like PDFs. Signing and moving pages between or to new PDFs are my most-used features. And it’s the best basic image viewer / light editor I’ve used.
shmerl 7y ago
Gaming on Linux is fine these days. Surely not a blocker for switching for the most part (except for some edge cases like some multiplayer games that depend on some weird anti-cheats).
- CallMeMarc 7y ago
  I've made quite other experiences with my setup. I'm not that experienced but with my Ubuntu and i3 setup with the standard drivers from Nvidia I couldn't get playonlinux or wine running. I can't exactly tell what the problem in the end was, but it definitely is not as easy as on Windows or even Mac imo.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Nvidia continues to ruin the experience for people.
    - CallMeMarc 7y ago
      Yes, definitely should have avoided them in the first place
  - shmerl 7y ago
    I surely won't recommend Nvidia for anything Linux these days. Get a decent AMD card. That said, Nvidia should work with Wine too. Most problems with Wine are caused by missing dependencies, like 32-bit libraries that are often needed for 32-bit games naturally.
    - CallMeMarc 7y ago
      Yes, that's what I've learned on the way but back as a bought my Thinkpad I didn't think about stuff like this as I also initially ran Windows
    - arvinsim 7y ago
      > I surely won't recommend Nvidia for anything Linux these days Probably not an option for serious compute work that relies on CUDA. EDIT: Compute, not computer.
freeqaz 7y ago
For the screen tearing, I noticed you're using i3 which doesn't include a compositor. If you install Compton, that will fix the tearing issue. :)
- benjiweber 7y ago
  With nvidia's driver and multiple displays I still get tearing with an active compositor. Took me a long time to discover the "Force Composition Pipeline" and "Force Full Composition Pipeline" options in nvidia-settings which fix it.
sandGorgon 7y ago
I also highly recommend Fedora. The polish is far higher than Ubuntu.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  And just using a Gnome shell with almost no customization AND NOT WORRYING AT ALL ABOUT THAT is a huge productivity boost. If we haven't wasted so many hours writing the perfect WM theme, selecting the perfect colors, making the perfect icons and backgrounds, we'd be long past the Singularity and enjoying our superintelligent agents taking care of our every need.
BLKNSLVR 7y ago
The "hardware as commodity" is an ideology that I've been playing with for a while. I have my personal cloud that I can access via VPN, including a Windows desktop running in a VM, personal photos and home videos sync'd to a NAS using SyncThing. De-coupling the portable device (which, due to its portability, is much more prone to breakage or theft) from the data that it captures or has access to. My journey to this ideology was close calls with data loss due to both hardware failure and theft. Rather than backing up to a central location, have the data "live" at the central location, then back it up off-site somewhere. This can also have both negative and positive security implications in the even of a lost or stolen device, but those scenarios are likely not quite as bad as if you've got a whole whack of data on the device as well. This can be done across platforms too, as far as my experience goes. It's unrelated to the author's transition to Linux / Ubuntu. My stable consists of android phones, iPads, Chromebooks (which don't really count because they embody this ideology already), laptops running both Linux and Windows. Although I'm also most of the way through transitioning away from Windows (but RDP is just so good for controlling a remote GUI).
- bionicbits 7y ago
  What do you use for your personal cloud?
  - BLKNSLVR 7y ago
    It's a mish-mash. A bunch of VMs running on ProxMox, Wireguard is the link from the outside world, QNAP NAS for document storage and running SyncThing server for phone photos and videos backup, a couple of Windows VM's we RDP into for banking and centralised documents and spreadsheets. Also PiHole running on a VM so my 'roaming' browsing is nice and clean. Also, although off-topic-ish, ZoneMinder and LMS (lightweight music server - which the author linked to in comments a week ago or so: https://github.com/epoupon/lms https://github.com/epoupon/lms) VMs accessible via the VPN. Nothing particularly "integrated" like Sandstorm or NextCloud, but I haven't had the existential need for that level of accessibility. The QNAP NAS (like Synology) has personal cloud apps, but I don't tend to like doing things the easy way. Going down that path also locks services into a particular hardware dependency. VMs are easily backed up and restorable to ProxMox running on new / different hardware if necessary.
rct42 7y ago
Something I've appreciated after replacing Windows with Ubuntu on most of my machines is the ability for me to take its SSD out and put it in another computer. Really handy for travelling. While I could get a small laptop for portability, its pretty hard to match the price/performance of a desktop. Also like how I can put together a desktop that is really quiet (PC has a NH-D15) even while under high load.
davb 7y ago
I had terrible tearing with my default Ubuntu 19.04 install last week, too. I'm using an Intel integrated GPU. The solution was to create the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf (and the directory, as it didn't already exist but does get checked by X11 if present) with the following content: Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection No more screen tearing, in my case!
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  There are similar workarounds for Nvidia and AMD cards as well. For the GeForce I used previously, I remember having to set "Force Composition Pipeline" in the nvidia-settings application. For the Radeon I'm on now, I had to do some config file magic, but I don't remember what it was anymore.
  - gentaro 7y ago
    I switched to using PopOS, it's completely removed the headache I previously had with Nvidia cards on Linux.
- amiga-workbench 7y ago
  It's quite irritating that these settings aren't sane defaults that the driver falls back on, but at least it's simple to configure.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    One's sanity is another's insanity. I dislike vsync'd desktop (and it is my #1 annoyance with Windows since 8, i just put up with it) so for me the sane option is the existing default one.
    - timvisee 7y ago
      Could you elaborate why?
MarcScott 7y ago
> Even when I was running Windows, I would wipe my computer every few months. I kept a "Backup Image" handy with all my settings already installed. I've spent far too many hours trying to undo damage I've done to my systems by installing random software from the internet onto my workstation; I've come to value the option of resetting my computer to a known, healthy state immensely. I often thought I was the only one. On Windows, macOS and even Ubuntu I was reinstalling my OS at least three or four times a year. I had install scripts and GitHub repos designed to reconfigure my machine after each install. The process always took a full day. Now I'm on NixOS. I have three .nix text files, .emacs, .bashrc and that's about all I need to backup in order to clone my environment on any machine. I've also stopped reinstalling my OS all the time, as I always know my machine's state, just by looking at those few files.
- shaki-dora 7y ago
  Both reinstalling every X months (as well as NixOS) seem like an awfully unproductive use of time. It's ok if that's your hobby. But it just isn't necessary. I've been running the same install of MacOS (with updates) for eight years and it's working fine.
  - wisty 7y ago
    Think of it as testing a backup.
    - baq 7y ago
      I’d rather use a vm for that.
  - pnutjam 7y ago
    Basic devops management.
- Jaruzel 7y ago
  I was puzzled by the article authors statement on this. My main daily machine is Windows 10. It's been running the same 'copy' of Windows 10 since late 2016, and has gone through all the major updates since then, and has had many applications installed and removed on it since then. Office has gone from v2010 thru v2013 to Office 365 (effectively v2019), and I'm always playing with new software. The machine still runs perfectly fine, with no strange problems, errors or slowdowns. To rebuild it to the state it currently is, would take me several days of installing and configuring, for very little benefit. Imho, there is no reason to reinstall your OS every few months.
gen3 7y ago
I will say, using a more full featured desktop environment can help with the transition (KDE or Gnome). The issues you had with usb devices requiring you to drop into a shell go away. Things like external displays just work, removing the awkward xrandr fiddling before a presentation.
ehnto 7y ago
> I'm able to focus better. I never get unprompted system popups on my screen except during boot. i3 helped me so much with focus. I can also move around and manage my entire workspace with my keyboard which feels more concise. It's not really a time efficiency gain so to speak, more like a mental headroom gain that lets me be more productive. I'm not flicking between windows and spaces with alt-tab to try and find what I'm looking for. I'm just going right to what I want with a keyboard shortcut. It feels a lot more like working at a purpose built workstation rather than a consumer OS that I've stuffed software development tools into.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  For others who are curious about tiling window managers, please also consider Awesome. It's a lua backend and is gpl vs i3's bsd (for those of us who care about that sort of thing).
  - crispinb 7y ago
    I tried it on both the distros I've used lately (Fedora & Clear Linux). In both cases it popped up without any scaling on my hdpi laptop screen. Not being able to even see enough to be able to research what to do about this, I gave up and went back to Gnome. Same with i3.
    - sergiosgc 7y ago
      If you run i3 inside a gnome-session [1], you get gnome-settings-daemon running, which will set your dpi according to the preferences set in gnome. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332778
      - crispinb 7y ago
        I have no doubt it can be done, but that route pursued for every little issue leads to a nightmare of computer-fiddling that is not how I personally wish to spend my life. For OS hobbyists only.
jwr 7y ago
I also tried using Ubuntu with i3 for several months. I went back to an iMac, for two reasons: 1) a 5K 27" screen means I can have 3 or sometimes even 4 columns of code on screen in my Emacs at the same time, and there is no way to get 5K with a PC 2) the totally broken clipboard in Linux causes constant annoyance: I want reliable, predictable copy/paste for text that works the same in every application, with the same keystrokes, and that does not auto-copy on selection (this is important, because I often want to paste OVER a selection) All the other complaints I had were minor: I was able to somehow get the hardware to work, I did not connect external monitors (which has always been a disaster in Linux), stuff mostly worked. But these two were showstoppers.
- satanspastaroll 7y ago
  Tangentially related, but I hate by-default enabled middle mouse paste on Firefox. I use autoscroll (hold middle mouse) to browsing, and it keeps sending paste on the site. Why is it enabled by default?? At best it's mild inconvenience, at worst it leaks company data to outside websites that bother to capture it.
  - rvense 7y ago
    Because this is how copy-paste always worked on X11. I'm used to it, so I hate apps that don't respect it. The option to disable it is an app-specific option to override the environment's default behaviour.
    - satanspastaroll 7y ago
      Is there a way to globally disable middle mouse paste on X11? I don't really use it anywhere, and when i do, it's mostly by accident
  - olau 7y ago
    It's enabled because it's a very old standard, just like Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V. If you were using Ctrl-V to scroll down, I guess you'd have the same kind of problem and could level the same complaint. Tangentially related, applying constant pressure to a mouse button to scroll sounds like it could cause stress problem for your fingers long term.
luord 7y ago
I liked the last in point in particular. It's one of the reasons I don't keep dotfiles around and even my vim configuration is minimal. I'd rather get used to defaults in case I need to use another computer in a pinch than getting used to a system and having to google how to do every little thing when in another system. I picked up that habit, when I had to work on remote servers nearly every day. That's probably a bit zealous of me, but I've gotten used to it.
Groxx 7y ago
>For instance, if I want to plug in a USB microphone, headphones, and two displays to my computer all at once, I'll have to do some configuration through the command line to make them work correctly. tbh this kind of thing is why I keep leaving linuxes/unixes/etcs. the amount of background knowledge you need to have to do this without spending hours each time is immense, and I didn't grow up with it so I don't have it.
- crispinb 7y ago
  He points out it's more work, and it surely is. I've shifted in the last 18 months from MacOS to Windows 10, to Linux (Fedora), back to Windows 10, and now back again to Linux (Clear). The Windows/Linux oscillation demonstrates that I'm not really happy with either. I'm staying with Linux for now out of stubbornness. But I wish there were better options, and am saddened that the 2019 desktop OS scene is as dire as it is.
  - panpanna 7y ago
    > He points out it's more work, and it surely is. Well, technically you are using an oddball distro initially created for headless embedded systems. He is using a server distro with a i3 DE shoehorned into it.
    - crispinb 7y ago
      True on CL (which I wouldn't quite recommend for normal use though its performance is really tempting for developers). But I found the same with Fedora earlier this year. And Ubuntu in the more distant past. It's more-or-less worth it to me, though I do vacillate. The available OS options are all rubbish, each in their distinct way.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  I'm running Debian 10 with KDE and use microphone through mostly unplugged USB interface (it's plugged in Wintendo by default), headphones and two displays. Nothing of that was configured within command line.
- 7y ago
ekianjo 7y ago
Screen tearing is usually a compositor issue. I still find it terrible that this is not dealt well by default in Ubuntu in 2019.
hyfgfh 7y ago
it might be a good idea try a linux distro
tontonius 7y ago
Is 2019 the year of the Linux desktop?
- crispinb 7y ago
  Microsoft seems to think so.
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    Windows would become a very serious contender to MacOS if it becomes "unixy" like it.
    - pluma 7y ago
      It's telling of HN's demographic bias that you'd think Windows "would become a very serious contender to macOS". There are far more people using Windows than macOS, even among developers, even if you only look at the US.
      - rbanffy 7y ago
        In these days when 32 gigs is the norm for developer laptops, I'd assume anything that can run a VM full screen is good enough.
      - SiVal 7y ago
        I'm pretty sure the GP meant that Windows would become much more attractive to current Mac users, and I agree. A lot of serious computer work is done on Macs, because the Mac client has so much in common with the Linux server. If MS put a Windows shell on top of a Linux kernel, Windows would suddenly become a better complement to Linux servers than the Mac ever was, while still enabling work tools such as Photoshop to still be used (unlike, say, an Ubuntu client). That would make Windows a serious contender for the market of people doing production work on Macs.
        pluma 7y ago
Yizahi 7y ago
I don't get author's complaint about reinstalling Windows every few months, imho it is completely insane. Even in the age of Win95/98 I never had a need to re-install more than once a year maybe and I was in school at that time and all software was downloaded from shady sources. Now - there is zero need to re-install at all, I only do it when I change hardware platform completely - storage, MB etc. Same with "unsolicited popups". What are you using that does this? Windows itself shows me reboot needed popup once a few months maybe and that's about it. Some software can show it's own popup when I launch it and it is often relevant. Windows is not perfect and Linux is great (and not perfect too) but really, some complaints about Windows seems to be straight from late 90s, with custom virus packaged Win98 distributives on torrents.
- ahbyb 7y ago
  Windows gets a big update every few months. Those would always fail for me because I had a custom partition layout (Hackintosh) and I would have to reinstall every time. Popups? Maybe he means the new notification system that was included with... 8? I hate notifications that cover part of my screen while I use my computer/mobile, so I have them disabled. I can understand that they are annoying for some, and they are not trivial to completely disable.
  - Yizahi 7y ago
    I mean, yes, there popups. But my linux installation does exactly that too, every login I get software update popup by default and if I don't want to see it I need to change options manually (and update settings in linux are far from trivial). As for bad upgrades - I had linux upgrades which failed something in the video path and I was stuck with broken X server and no GUI. And I didn't manage to repair that state even after extensive searching on stack exchange, so I just deleted everything and reinstalled. Another time I tried to install custom software and ended in a error hell of incompatible versions of libc, libtrpc etc. and it simply didn't work (it was on Debian), but at the same it worked just fine on another VM with different distributive. No OS is perfect currently.
    - 7y ago
davewasthere 7y ago
I don't see any problem with re-installing windows though as often as you like. By being a little disciplined, you can have a fresh install of windows, configured with all the apps you need from woah to go in little over a couple hours. I like having a scriptable install of windows in case I completely lose a system while travelling, it's easy for me to completely restore and be productive again within a few hours (just buy a new laptop). Choco really helps here too. choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation choco install googlechrome choco install firefox choco install 7zip choco install vlc choco install git choco install paint.net choco install sql-server-management-studio choco install vscode choco install visualstudio2019community gets me to 90% of where I need to go.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  > in little over a couple hours That seems a couple of hours too long to me. Copying over from a backup takes a bit of time, but not hours.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  Boxstarter makes it even easier, as you can just do Win+R, and type https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/{packages https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/{packages from choco separated by commas}. It bootstraps chocolatey and installs everything, and I can be running on a new system in 10 minutes. https://boxstarter.org/ https://boxstarter.org/
- geolgau 7y ago
  you know you can do choco install googlechrome firefox 7zip vlc git ... ?
- sp332 7y ago
  I can get 2/3 of those with https://ninite.com/7zip-chrome-firefox-paint.net-vlc-vscode/ https://ninite.com/7zip-chrome-firefox-paint.net-vlc-vscode/ and when I want to update any of them I just double-click the same installer file.
rkangel 7y ago
Related: How do people manage their dotfiles? I have mine in a git repository, but then I have a hand maintained bash script to make symlinks from the right paths to those files in the repo.
- hso1 7y ago
  To make that easier, I use stow.
- anuragsoni 7y ago
  Similar to you I keep mine in a git repository, but I use dotbot[1] to manage the symlinks to the proper paths. [1] https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot
- lunchables 7y ago
  git + gnu stow
- cweagans 7y ago
  yadm. It's a very thin wrapper around git with a couple of quality of life improvements (like being able to have encrypted files + the ability to execute a bootstrap script on the first pull of your dotfiles).
gambiting 7y ago
>>Maybe I'm spoiled with Linux, but I like that I can install the OS without worrying about a license. Windows does this, and I don't know if it's the financial burden I don't like, the mental overhead of keeping track of where my licenses are, or perhaps even just the idea that I don't really have full control of my software. I don't recall the last time I had to worry about licencing. The licence gets bound to the particular hardware ID and it activates on its own, you don't even have to type in the licence code anywhere during installation. Very weird argument to use against Windows nowadays.
rbanffy 7y ago
> Plus, open source has come a long way in terms of stability and reliability over the past 5-10 years I'd say the same about Windows ;-) No. Seriously. My Linux environments have been rock solid since the early 2000's.
GrumpyNl 7y ago
I switched from win 10 to debian-10 because of incompatibility of docker with win 10. What a pain is that to install that stuff. Its back to 1990, lets install all from the command line. Took me over a day just to get my wireless working on a acer laptop. When that was finally working, had to spend a day to delete stuff because otherwise it wont update. Sudo became my friend. Its an insane experiment for 2019.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wallace_f 7y ago
What does HN think of storing your backup of your pics on Google Pictures? It's free and has unlimited storage for typical quality photos. Is there any downside to this besides privacy concerns?
rbanffy 7y ago
> I used to salivate over computers. News of the next most-powerful processor or RAM upgrade was irresistible for a period of my life. I can relate to that. Of course I'd love to have an 8-way Xeon Platinum with a terabyte of RAM (so I could use Slack) to run Emacs and my terminal sessions, but I can't really justify that. To say nothing about the noise. Or build a Cray-2 shaped box with a beefy GPU on each of its 11 lobes immersed in Novec bubbling like a real Cray 2. Or a Connection Machines CM-2a-like box with 16 boards hosting 8 RPi-like boards each with each core/thread lighting up one of 32 LEDs on the front. Or fewer SBCs on each if I figure out how to light up LEDs based on SIMD usage in them - 128 nodes is quite a lot. I deeply admire the art that goes into making a Rome, a POWER9, a 28-core Xeon or an IBM z15. I designed a stack-based CPU in college and I know how hard it is to get everything in place. It's just that I have no use for any of that. Quite frankly, my Xeon tower server is almost 90% idle at any given time, its memory almost completely deserted, as is my Core i3 and my Celeron laptops.
- neurobashing 7y ago
  I used to be the same way; I'd pore over data sheets and whatever else, I wanted to optimize _everything_. Then one day, I dunno, I snapped. I think some minor tweak broke something and I just gave up. I wanted to not care about it ever again. As it happens, I ended up buying a Mac, but I imagine you could just as easily get the same effect with Windows. The trend continued with iPhone and iPad; I don't care about specs, other than "can this hold my pics and music" or "can this run the 5 tools I need to work". I guess I only started caring about specs again when Apple introduced broken-by-design keyboards and the ridiculous touchbar. Somehow that snapped me, again. Like suddenly someone put a tack on my comfy seat.
- cr0sh 7y ago
  I like your "dream machines" - reminds me of one of mine: 8 stacked cube ThermalTake V1 aka megacube (supposedly they are designed to do this) best mini-itx mobo in each with highest-end CPU per and max RAM; 7 as netboot, 1 as master highest-end NVidia GPU in the master, with the remainder filled with the best NVidia TPUs or whatever instead of video cards fans and lights as needed/wanted Essentially to end up with one helluva nice TensorFlow box. I just can't justify the space, power, cost, etc that it would take to build such a beast. It would really be "for show" because it honestly could be made much smaller with probably better cooling and such with a proper case. I haven't really priced it out - just a dream that will remain so. Now - on a different level - and something I do intend to try - is what I call my "Poor man's Jetson TX" design: Basically take a cheap Mini-ITX motherboard, drop a decent CPU in it (something fast with 4-8 cores), put 8-16 gig of RAM in it, then take a NVidia 750 TI SC Mini and mount it horizontally over the CPU and such (use a 1U server cooler for the CPU), using one of those flexible PCIe x16 risers. I've got all the parts to try it. It would be nice for running models for an embedded system, and costs way less than the real deal. I don't think it's as powerful, but I think it would come close. Nor maybe not as efficient - not sure. But cheap - very cheap.
ph2082 7y ago
Using Ubuntu since 2012 on i5 with 8GB RAM. Eclipse for Java Dev work. Thunderbird for Mail. Firefox my favourite browser. Skype for Call. Never regretted anything. Thing I like about this set up is that it does not come in way of getting things done.
seamyb88 7y ago
It was maybe three or four hours after switching from Windows to Linux that I began being the biggest Linux snob in the entire world.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

208 points by ryannjohnson 7y ago

The problems you mention that you haven't solved are solvable. Are you looking for advice? I admit, I don't quite understand the reason for the opening post.

bionicbits 7y ago
The things I would miss most leaving Mac... 1. Uploading my Signature in Preview and being able to sign and edit PDF documents on any of my Apple Devices. 2. Screen rendering quality, on Mac everything seems to be sharper and more crisp than Linux on the same device. 3. Keynote. I so want a cross-platform replacement that is nearly as good. 4. iMessage integration with phone. I can send sms/iMessages from my Mac. But I am planning to switch anyways. As all these companies move to a "service model", I feel like I am only leasing my software, and tools that make the hardware work. Furthermore, it feels impossible to get under the hood anymore. Would love any advice or recommendations for the above.
- jcelerier 7y ago
  For 2. That's funny, for me mac screens look like a blurry mess while Linux are the sharpest thing around with infinality patches. For 4. There is kde connect (you don't need to run kde to have it). Works only with android though afaik.
  - hiram112 7y ago
    Are infinality patches still being updated? Those were about the only reason I could tolerate a standard Centos or RHEL desktop, but I'd heard the maintainer 'disappeared' and nobody has picked them back up.
    - jcelerier 7y ago
      For some time there weren't but now someone is on it again : ``` aur/cairo-infinality 1.17.2+11+gdfe3aa6d8-1 (38) (0,00) aur/cairo-infinality-remix 1.17.2+17+g52a7c79fd-1 (6) (1,33) aur/fontconfig-infinality 2.13.1+12+g5f5ec56-1 (310) (0,00) aur/fontconfig-infinality-remix 2.13.1-2 (6) (1,33) aur/fontconfig-infinality-ultimate 2.13.1-1 [installed] (21) (0,00) aur/fonts-meta-base 1-2 [installed] (90) (0,09) aur/fonts-meta-extended-lt 3-1 [installed] (91) (0,09) aur/freetype2-demos-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-demos-infinality-remix 2.10.1-1 (7) (1,44) aur/freetype2-docs-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-infinality 2.10.0-4 (470) (0,01) aur/freetype2-infinality-remix 2.10.1-1 (7) (1,44) aur/freetype2-ultimate5 2.10.1-1 [installed] (12) (1,00) aur/gimp-font-rendering-fix 1-1 (5) (0,00) aur/grip-git 20120917-1 (37) (0,00) aur/jdk7-openjdk-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jdk8-openjdk-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/jre7-openjdk-headless-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jre7-openjdk-infinality 7.u171_2.6.13-1 (27) (0,00) aur/jre8-openjdk-headless-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/jre8-openjdk-infinality 8.u172-3 (33) (0,00) aur/lib32-fontconfig-infinality 2.13.1+12+g5f5ec56-1 (0) (0,00) aur/lib32-fontconfig-infinality-ultimate 2.13.1-1 (3) (0,00) aur/lib32-freetype2-infinality-ultimate 2.9.1-2 (Out of Date) (9) (0,04) aur/ttf-dejavu-ib 2.37-2 (0) (0,00) ```
  - MarcScott 7y ago
    Also messages.google.com with Android. But with the obvious caveat that you're giving extra data to Google.
- kam 7y ago
  For 1, Xournal can open PDFs, insert text, images, and annotations, and export back to PDF.
  - SanchoPanda 7y ago
    Libreoffice draw is amazing at PDF documents as well. It's something that feels like it should be advertised more, though I can imagine why they don't.
- SanchoPanda 7y ago
  3 - libreoffice impress. For Numbers I like gnumeric over libreoffice Calc, but nothing really holds a candle to excel unfortunately.
  - bionicbits 7y ago
    Will check this out. Been decades since I last tried libre office. fingers crossed
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Calc actually works much better for spread sheets with odd character sets than excel does.
- shantly 7y ago
  Preview is amazing. I’ve never used another PDF reader that didn’t make me sad every time I had to use it. It’s nice to like PDFs. Signing and moving pages between or to new PDFs are my most-used features. And it’s the best basic image viewer / light editor I’ve used.

shmerl 7y ago

Gaming on Linux is fine these days. Surely not a blocker for switching for the most part (except for some edge cases like some multiplayer games that depend on some weird anti-cheats).

CallMeMarc 7y ago
I've made quite other experiences with my setup. I'm not that experienced but with my Ubuntu and i3 setup with the standard drivers from Nvidia I couldn't get playonlinux or wine running. I can't exactly tell what the problem in the end was, but it definitely is not as easy as on Windows or even Mac imo.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Nvidia continues to ruin the experience for people.
  - CallMeMarc 7y ago
    Yes, definitely should have avoided them in the first place
- shmerl 7y ago
  I surely won't recommend Nvidia for anything Linux these days. Get a decent AMD card. That said, Nvidia should work with Wine too. Most problems with Wine are caused by missing dependencies, like 32-bit libraries that are often needed for 32-bit games naturally.
  - CallMeMarc 7y ago
    Yes, that's what I've learned on the way but back as a bought my Thinkpad I didn't think about stuff like this as I also initially ran Windows
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    > I surely won't recommend Nvidia for anything Linux these days Probably not an option for serious compute work that relies on CUDA. EDIT: Compute, not computer.

freeqaz 7y ago

For the screen tearing, I noticed you're using i3 which doesn't include a compositor. If you install Compton, that will fix the tearing issue. :)

benjiweber 7y ago
With nvidia's driver and multiple displays I still get tearing with an active compositor. Took me a long time to discover the "Force Composition Pipeline" and "Force Full Composition Pipeline" options in nvidia-settings which fix it.

sandGorgon 7y ago

I also highly recommend Fedora. The polish is far higher than Ubuntu.

rbanffy 7y ago
And just using a Gnome shell with almost no customization AND NOT WORRYING AT ALL ABOUT THAT is a huge productivity boost. If we haven't wasted so many hours writing the perfect WM theme, selecting the perfect colors, making the perfect icons and backgrounds, we'd be long past the Singularity and enjoying our superintelligent agents taking care of our every need.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago

The "hardware as commodity" is an ideology that I've been playing with for a while. I have my personal cloud that I can access via VPN, including a Windows desktop running in a VM, personal photos and home videos sync'd to a NAS using SyncThing. De-coupling the portable device (which, due to its portability, is much more prone to breakage or theft) from the data that it captures or has access to. My journey to this ideology was close calls with data loss due to both hardware failure and theft. Rather than backing up to a central location, have the data "live" at the central location, then back it up off-site somewhere. This can also have both negative and positive security implications in the even of a lost or stolen device, but those scenarios are likely not quite as bad as if you've got a whole whack of data on the device as well. This can be done across platforms too, as far as my experience goes. It's unrelated to the author's transition to Linux / Ubuntu. My stable consists of android phones, iPads, Chromebooks (which don't really count because they embody this ideology already), laptops running both Linux and Windows. Although I'm also most of the way through transitioning away from Windows (but RDP is just so good for controlling a remote GUI).

bionicbits 7y ago
What do you use for your personal cloud?
- BLKNSLVR 7y ago
  It's a mish-mash. A bunch of VMs running on ProxMox, Wireguard is the link from the outside world, QNAP NAS for document storage and running SyncThing server for phone photos and videos backup, a couple of Windows VM's we RDP into for banking and centralised documents and spreadsheets. Also PiHole running on a VM so my 'roaming' browsing is nice and clean. Also, although off-topic-ish, ZoneMinder and LMS (lightweight music server - which the author linked to in comments a week ago or so: https://github.com/epoupon/lms https://github.com/epoupon/lms) VMs accessible via the VPN. Nothing particularly "integrated" like Sandstorm or NextCloud, but I haven't had the existential need for that level of accessibility. The QNAP NAS (like Synology) has personal cloud apps, but I don't tend to like doing things the easy way. Going down that path also locks services into a particular hardware dependency. VMs are easily backed up and restorable to ProxMox running on new / different hardware if necessary.

rct42 7y ago

Something I've appreciated after replacing Windows with Ubuntu on most of my machines is the ability for me to take its SSD out and put it in another computer. Really handy for travelling. While I could get a small laptop for portability, its pretty hard to match the price/performance of a desktop. Also like how I can put together a desktop that is really quiet (PC has a NH-D15) even while under high load.

davb 7y ago

I had terrible tearing with my default Ubuntu 19.04 install last week, too. I'm using an Intel integrated GPU. The solution was to create the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf (and the directory, as it didn't already exist but does get checked by X11 if present) with the following content: Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection No more screen tearing, in my case!

TeMPOraL 7y ago
There are similar workarounds for Nvidia and AMD cards as well. For the GeForce I used previously, I remember having to set "Force Composition Pipeline" in the nvidia-settings application. For the Radeon I'm on now, I had to do some config file magic, but I don't remember what it was anymore.
- gentaro 7y ago
  I switched to using PopOS, it's completely removed the headache I previously had with Nvidia cards on Linux.
amiga-workbench 7y ago
It's quite irritating that these settings aren't sane defaults that the driver falls back on, but at least it's simple to configure.
- Crinus 7y ago
  One's sanity is another's insanity. I dislike vsync'd desktop (and it is my #1 annoyance with Windows since 8, i just put up with it) so for me the sane option is the existing default one.
  - timvisee 7y ago
    Could you elaborate why?

MarcScott 7y ago

> Even when I was running Windows, I would wipe my computer every few months. I kept a "Backup Image" handy with all my settings already installed. I've spent far too many hours trying to undo damage I've done to my systems by installing random software from the internet onto my workstation; I've come to value the option of resetting my computer to a known, healthy state immensely. I often thought I was the only one. On Windows, macOS and even Ubuntu I was reinstalling my OS at least three or four times a year. I had install scripts and GitHub repos designed to reconfigure my machine after each install. The process always took a full day. Now I'm on NixOS. I have three .nix text files, .emacs, .bashrc and that's about all I need to backup in order to clone my environment on any machine. I've also stopped reinstalling my OS all the time, as I always know my machine's state, just by looking at those few files.

shaki-dora 7y ago
Both reinstalling every X months (as well as NixOS) seem like an awfully unproductive use of time. It's ok if that's your hobby. But it just isn't necessary. I've been running the same install of MacOS (with updates) for eight years and it's working fine.
- wisty 7y ago
  Think of it as testing a backup.
  - baq 7y ago
    I’d rather use a vm for that.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Basic devops management.
Jaruzel 7y ago
I was puzzled by the article authors statement on this. My main daily machine is Windows 10. It's been running the same 'copy' of Windows 10 since late 2016, and has gone through all the major updates since then, and has had many applications installed and removed on it since then. Office has gone from v2010 thru v2013 to Office 365 (effectively v2019), and I'm always playing with new software. The machine still runs perfectly fine, with no strange problems, errors or slowdowns. To rebuild it to the state it currently is, would take me several days of installing and configuring, for very little benefit. Imho, there is no reason to reinstall your OS every few months.

gen3 7y ago

I will say, using a more full featured desktop environment can help with the transition (KDE or Gnome). The issues you had with usb devices requiring you to drop into a shell go away. Things like external displays just work, removing the awkward xrandr fiddling before a presentation.

ehnto 7y ago

> I'm able to focus better. I never get unprompted system popups on my screen except during boot. i3 helped me so much with focus. I can also move around and manage my entire workspace with my keyboard which feels more concise. It's not really a time efficiency gain so to speak, more like a mental headroom gain that lets me be more productive. I'm not flicking between windows and spaces with alt-tab to try and find what I'm looking for. I'm just going right to what I want with a keyboard shortcut. It feels a lot more like working at a purpose built workstation rather than a consumer OS that I've stuffed software development tools into.

arminiusreturns 7y ago
For others who are curious about tiling window managers, please also consider Awesome. It's a lua backend and is gpl vs i3's bsd (for those of us who care about that sort of thing).
- crispinb 7y ago
  I tried it on both the distros I've used lately (Fedora & Clear Linux). In both cases it popped up without any scaling on my hdpi laptop screen. Not being able to even see enough to be able to research what to do about this, I gave up and went back to Gnome. Same with i3.
  - sergiosgc 7y ago
    If you run i3 inside a gnome-session [1], you get gnome-settings-daemon running, which will set your dpi according to the preferences set in gnome. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332778
    - crispinb 7y ago
      I have no doubt it can be done, but that route pursued for every little issue leads to a nightmare of computer-fiddling that is not how I personally wish to spend my life. For OS hobbyists only.

jwr 7y ago

I also tried using Ubuntu with i3 for several months. I went back to an iMac, for two reasons: 1) a 5K 27" screen means I can have 3 or sometimes even 4 columns of code on screen in my Emacs at the same time, and there is no way to get 5K with a PC 2) the totally broken clipboard in Linux causes constant annoyance: I want reliable, predictable copy/paste for text that works the same in every application, with the same keystrokes, and that does not auto-copy on selection (this is important, because I often want to paste OVER a selection) All the other complaints I had were minor: I was able to somehow get the hardware to work, I did not connect external monitors (which has always been a disaster in Linux), stuff mostly worked. But these two were showstoppers.

satanspastaroll 7y ago
Tangentially related, but I hate by-default enabled middle mouse paste on Firefox. I use autoscroll (hold middle mouse) to browsing, and it keeps sending paste on the site. Why is it enabled by default?? At best it's mild inconvenience, at worst it leaks company data to outside websites that bother to capture it.
- rvense 7y ago
  Because this is how copy-paste always worked on X11. I'm used to it, so I hate apps that don't respect it. The option to disable it is an app-specific option to override the environment's default behaviour.
  - satanspastaroll 7y ago
    Is there a way to globally disable middle mouse paste on X11? I don't really use it anywhere, and when i do, it's mostly by accident
- olau 7y ago
  It's enabled because it's a very old standard, just like Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V. If you were using Ctrl-V to scroll down, I guess you'd have the same kind of problem and could level the same complaint. Tangentially related, applying constant pressure to a mouse button to scroll sounds like it could cause stress problem for your fingers long term.

luord 7y ago

I liked the last in point in particular. It's one of the reasons I don't keep dotfiles around and even my vim configuration is minimal. I'd rather get used to defaults in case I need to use another computer in a pinch than getting used to a system and having to google how to do every little thing when in another system. I picked up that habit, when I had to work on remote servers nearly every day. That's probably a bit zealous of me, but I've gotten used to it.

Groxx 7y ago

>For instance, if I want to plug in a USB microphone, headphones, and two displays to my computer all at once, I'll have to do some configuration through the command line to make them work correctly. tbh this kind of thing is why I keep leaving linuxes/unixes/etcs. the amount of background knowledge you need to have to do this without spending hours each time is immense, and I didn't grow up with it so I don't have it.

crispinb 7y ago
He points out it's more work, and it surely is. I've shifted in the last 18 months from MacOS to Windows 10, to Linux (Fedora), back to Windows 10, and now back again to Linux (Clear). The Windows/Linux oscillation demonstrates that I'm not really happy with either. I'm staying with Linux for now out of stubbornness. But I wish there were better options, and am saddened that the 2019 desktop OS scene is as dire as it is.
- panpanna 7y ago
  > He points out it's more work, and it surely is. Well, technically you are using an oddball distro initially created for headless embedded systems. He is using a server distro with a i3 DE shoehorned into it.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    True on CL (which I wouldn't quite recommend for normal use though its performance is really tempting for developers). But I found the same with Fedora earlier this year. And Ubuntu in the more distant past. It's more-or-less worth it to me, though I do vacillate. The available OS options are all rubbish, each in their distinct way.
chupasaurus 7y ago
I'm running Debian 10 with KDE and use microphone through mostly unplugged USB interface (it's plugged in Wintendo by default), headphones and two displays. Nothing of that was configured within command line.
7y ago

ekianjo 7y ago

Screen tearing is usually a compositor issue. I still find it terrible that this is not dealt well by default in Ubuntu in 2019.

hyfgfh 7y ago

it might be a good idea try a linux distro

tontonius 7y ago

Is 2019 the year of the Linux desktop?

crispinb 7y ago
Microsoft seems to think so.
- arvinsim 7y ago
  Windows would become a very serious contender to MacOS if it becomes "unixy" like it.
  - pluma 7y ago
    It's telling of HN's demographic bias that you'd think Windows "would become a very serious contender to macOS". There are far more people using Windows than macOS, even among developers, even if you only look at the US.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      In these days when 32 gigs is the norm for developer laptops, I'd assume anything that can run a VM full screen is good enough.
    - SiVal 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure the GP meant that Windows would become much more attractive to current Mac users, and I agree. A lot of serious computer work is done on Macs, because the Mac client has so much in common with the Linux server. If MS put a Windows shell on top of a Linux kernel, Windows would suddenly become a better complement to Linux servers than the Mac ever was, while still enabling work tools such as Photoshop to still be used (unlike, say, an Ubuntu client). That would make Windows a serious contender for the market of people doing production work on Macs.
      - pluma 7y ago

Yizahi 7y ago

I don't get author's complaint about reinstalling Windows every few months, imho it is completely insane. Even in the age of Win95/98 I never had a need to re-install more than once a year maybe and I was in school at that time and all software was downloaded from shady sources. Now - there is zero need to re-install at all, I only do it when I change hardware platform completely - storage, MB etc. Same with "unsolicited popups". What are you using that does this? Windows itself shows me reboot needed popup once a few months maybe and that's about it. Some software can show it's own popup when I launch it and it is often relevant. Windows is not perfect and Linux is great (and not perfect too) but really, some complaints about Windows seems to be straight from late 90s, with custom virus packaged Win98 distributives on torrents.

ahbyb 7y ago
Windows gets a big update every few months. Those would always fail for me because I had a custom partition layout (Hackintosh) and I would have to reinstall every time. Popups? Maybe he means the new notification system that was included with... 8? I hate notifications that cover part of my screen while I use my computer/mobile, so I have them disabled. I can understand that they are annoying for some, and they are not trivial to completely disable.
- Yizahi 7y ago
  I mean, yes, there popups. But my linux installation does exactly that too, every login I get software update popup by default and if I don't want to see it I need to change options manually (and update settings in linux are far from trivial). As for bad upgrades - I had linux upgrades which failed something in the video path and I was stuck with broken X server and no GUI. And I didn't manage to repair that state even after extensive searching on stack exchange, so I just deleted everything and reinstalled. Another time I tried to install custom software and ended in a error hell of incompatible versions of libc, libtrpc etc. and it simply didn't work (it was on Debian), but at the same it worked just fine on another VM with different distributive. No OS is perfect currently.
  - 7y ago

davewasthere 7y ago

I don't see any problem with re-installing windows though as often as you like. By being a little disciplined, you can have a fresh install of windows, configured with all the apps you need from woah to go in little over a couple hours. I like having a scriptable install of windows in case I completely lose a system while travelling, it's easy for me to completely restore and be productive again within a few hours (just buy a new laptop). Choco really helps here too. choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation choco install googlechrome choco install firefox choco install 7zip choco install vlc choco install git choco install paint.net choco install sql-server-management-studio choco install vscode choco install visualstudio2019community gets me to 90% of where I need to go.

diffeomorphism 7y ago
> in little over a couple hours That seems a couple of hours too long to me. Copying over from a backup takes a bit of time, but not hours.
jedieaston 7y ago
Boxstarter makes it even easier, as you can just do Win+R, and type https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/{packages https://boxstarter.org/package/nr/{packages from choco separated by commas}. It bootstraps chocolatey and installs everything, and I can be running on a new system in 10 minutes. https://boxstarter.org/ https://boxstarter.org/
geolgau 7y ago
you know you can do choco install googlechrome firefox 7zip vlc git ... ?
sp332 7y ago
I can get 2/3 of those with https://ninite.com/7zip-chrome-firefox-paint.net-vlc-vscode/ https://ninite.com/7zip-chrome-firefox-paint.net-vlc-vscode/ and when I want to update any of them I just double-click the same installer file.

rkangel 7y ago

Related: How do people manage their dotfiles? I have mine in a git repository, but then I have a hand maintained bash script to make symlinks from the right paths to those files in the repo.

hso1 7y ago
To make that easier, I use stow.
anuragsoni 7y ago
Similar to you I keep mine in a git repository, but I use dotbot[1] to manage the symlinks to the proper paths. [1] https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot
lunchables 7y ago
git + gnu stow
cweagans 7y ago
yadm. It's a very thin wrapper around git with a couple of quality of life improvements (like being able to have encrypted files + the ability to execute a bootstrap script on the first pull of your dotfiles).

gambiting 7y ago

>>Maybe I'm spoiled with Linux, but I like that I can install the OS without worrying about a license. Windows does this, and I don't know if it's the financial burden I don't like, the mental overhead of keeping track of where my licenses are, or perhaps even just the idea that I don't really have full control of my software. I don't recall the last time I had to worry about licencing. The licence gets bound to the particular hardware ID and it activates on its own, you don't even have to type in the licence code anywhere during installation. Very weird argument to use against Windows nowadays.

rbanffy 7y ago

> Plus, open source has come a long way in terms of stability and reliability over the past 5-10 years I'd say the same about Windows ;-) No. Seriously. My Linux environments have been rock solid since the early 2000's.

GrumpyNl 7y ago

I switched from win 10 to debian-10 because of incompatibility of docker with win 10. What a pain is that to install that stuff. Its back to 1990, lets install all from the command line. Took me over a day just to get my wireless working on a acer laptop. When that was finally working, had to spend a day to delete stuff because otherwise it wont update. Sudo became my friend. Its an insane experiment for 2019.

deleted 7y ago

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wallace_f 7y ago

What does HN think of storing your backup of your pics on Google Pictures? It's free and has unlimited storage for typical quality photos. Is there any downside to this besides privacy concerns?

rbanffy 7y ago

> I used to salivate over computers. News of the next most-powerful processor or RAM upgrade was irresistible for a period of my life. I can relate to that. Of course I'd love to have an 8-way Xeon Platinum with a terabyte of RAM (so I could use Slack) to run Emacs and my terminal sessions, but I can't really justify that. To say nothing about the noise. Or build a Cray-2 shaped box with a beefy GPU on each of its 11 lobes immersed in Novec bubbling like a real Cray 2. Or a Connection Machines CM-2a-like box with 16 boards hosting 8 RPi-like boards each with each core/thread lighting up one of 32 LEDs on the front. Or fewer SBCs on each if I figure out how to light up LEDs based on SIMD usage in them - 128 nodes is quite a lot. I deeply admire the art that goes into making a Rome, a POWER9, a 28-core Xeon or an IBM z15. I designed a stack-based CPU in college and I know how hard it is to get everything in place. It's just that I have no use for any of that. Quite frankly, my Xeon tower server is almost 90% idle at any given time, its memory almost completely deserted, as is my Core i3 and my Celeron laptops.

neurobashing 7y ago
I used to be the same way; I'd pore over data sheets and whatever else, I wanted to optimize _everything_. Then one day, I dunno, I snapped. I think some minor tweak broke something and I just gave up. I wanted to not care about it ever again. As it happens, I ended up buying a Mac, but I imagine you could just as easily get the same effect with Windows. The trend continued with iPhone and iPad; I don't care about specs, other than "can this hold my pics and music" or "can this run the 5 tools I need to work". I guess I only started caring about specs again when Apple introduced broken-by-design keyboards and the ridiculous touchbar. Somehow that snapped me, again. Like suddenly someone put a tack on my comfy seat.
cr0sh 7y ago
I like your "dream machines" - reminds me of one of mine: 8 stacked cube ThermalTake V1 aka megacube (supposedly they are designed to do this) best mini-itx mobo in each with highest-end CPU per and max RAM; 7 as netboot, 1 as master highest-end NVidia GPU in the master, with the remainder filled with the best NVidia TPUs or whatever instead of video cards fans and lights as needed/wanted Essentially to end up with one helluva nice TensorFlow box. I just can't justify the space, power, cost, etc that it would take to build such a beast. It would really be "for show" because it honestly could be made much smaller with probably better cooling and such with a proper case. I haven't really priced it out - just a dream that will remain so. Now - on a different level - and something I do intend to try - is what I call my "Poor man's Jetson TX" design: Basically take a cheap Mini-ITX motherboard, drop a decent CPU in it (something fast with 4-8 cores), put 8-16 gig of RAM in it, then take a NVidia 750 TI SC Mini and mount it horizontally over the CPU and such (use a 1U server cooler for the CPU), using one of those flexible PCIe x16 risers. I've got all the parts to try it. It would be nice for running models for an embedded system, and costs way less than the real deal. I don't think it's as powerful, but I think it would come close. Nor maybe not as efficient - not sure. But cheap - very cheap.

ph2082 7y ago

Using Ubuntu since 2012 on i5 with 8GB RAM. Eclipse for Java Dev work. Thunderbird for Mail. Firefox my favourite browser. Skype for Call. Never regretted anything. Thing I like about this set up is that it does not come in way of getting things done.

seamyb88 7y ago

It was maybe three or four hours after switching from Windows to Linux that I began being the biggest Linux snob in the entire world.

deleted 7y ago

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