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I’ve been draggggggiiinnngggg my feet on a new desktop workstation. Waiting for the store to come back to truly make a decision but I think that I’m gonna go fo

I’ve been draggggggiiinnngggg my feet on a new desktop workstation. Waiting for the store to come back to truly make a decision but I think that I’m gonna go for a Studio. The hacker in me wants to build a beefy Linux workstation but the pragmatist in me wants a machine that just works. I think the Apple tax is worth it here.

rnk 3y ago
I bought the prev generation for that kind of purpose, about 3 months ago. To get 2tb disk/128gb ram cost over $5k. Curious about new prices. The perf seemed good running 65b models but not 16bit. You need the ram and disk space, but the cost was astronomical.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  $5200 for an M2 Ultra Studio with 128GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Still costs $200 to upgrade a MBA with a 512GB SSD.
speed_spread 3y ago
I'm pretty certain you can buy yourself a Linux workstation that just works. ThreadRipper, ECC, NVidia proprietary drivers. Put Fedora on it. The trouble is leaving it alone and not messing with it after you get it going.
- m463 3y ago
  Curious - why do you suggest fedora? I'm familiar with ubuntu/debian and arch, but have never delved into why fedora/redhat/centos/rocky.
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    tons of people run redhat and derivatives in production for various reasons. it's also owned by IBM. you know how the old saying goes...
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    stable & works, at least in my experience with rhel
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    Ubuntu would probably work fine too, as any other well supported "big" distro. The reason for Fedora is more psychological, by choosing a "boring" distro one is less likely to be tempted to futz around with the config, etc. Which in my experience is now the primary source of Linux problems (as an over-experimenting user)
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      lol, very true
vbezhenar 3y ago
One option is to use macOS as Linux VM launcher. You won't lose much computing power, you'll have perfect driver situation, you'll have x86 compatibility with Rosetta, you'll have VM versatility with disk snapshots.
- nightski 3y ago
  That's an interesting option. Can you get direct GPU passthrough similar to what is offered with CUDA & WSL(g) on Windows?
imbnwa 3y ago
At the rate that Asahi Linux is making the desktop models work on Arch, you might be able to have both if you wait a bit

rnk 3y ago

I bought the prev generation for that kind of purpose, about 3 months ago. To get 2tb disk/128gb ram cost over $5k. Curious about new prices. The perf seemed good running 65b models but not 16bit. You need the ram and disk space, but the cost was astronomical.

goosedragons 3y ago
$5200 for an M2 Ultra Studio with 128GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Still costs $200 to upgrade a MBA with a 512GB SSD.

speed_spread 3y ago

I'm pretty certain you can buy yourself a Linux workstation that just works. ThreadRipper, ECC, NVidia proprietary drivers. Put Fedora on it. The trouble is leaving it alone and not messing with it after you get it going.

m463 3y ago
Curious - why do you suggest fedora? I'm familiar with ubuntu/debian and arch, but have never delved into why fedora/redhat/centos/rocky.
- inconceivable 3y ago
  tons of people run redhat and derivatives in production for various reasons. it's also owned by IBM. you know how the old saying goes...
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  stable & works, at least in my experience with rhel
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Ubuntu would probably work fine too, as any other well supported "big" distro. The reason for Fedora is more psychological, by choosing a "boring" distro one is less likely to be tempted to futz around with the config, etc. Which in my experience is now the primary source of Linux problems (as an over-experimenting user)
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    lol, very true

vbezhenar 3y ago

One option is to use macOS as Linux VM launcher. You won't lose much computing power, you'll have perfect driver situation, you'll have x86 compatibility with Rosetta, you'll have VM versatility with disk snapshots.

nightski 3y ago
That's an interesting option. Can you get direct GPU passthrough similar to what is offered with CUDA & WSL(g) on Windows?

imbnwa 3y ago

At the rate that Asahi Linux is making the desktop models work on Arch, you might be able to have both if you wait a bit