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Author Topic: What hardware do people use for Linux?  (Read 7579 times)

dee.jay

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #15 on: December 04, 2019, 09:48:46 AM »

I mostly use Windows as I play games. Game support is getting there on Linux though.

I have a number of machines here, but I'd have no issue running linux on anything, it really will run on mostly anything these days.

My first real Linux experiment was running Debian on my first NAS drive I'd bought back in 2010... :) QNAP-TS210
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broadstairs

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #16 on: December 04, 2019, 10:39:23 AM »

As for applications on Linux there is nothing I need which is not available on Linux. For image processing I have GIMP Darktable and Digikam (mainly for quick edits but is is good for managing collections), web work and email you have legions of stuff. The only thing I am unable to do is print wirelessly to my dyesub postcard printer but I am able to run W7 in Virtualbox for that  ;D For an office suite I have Libreoffice. The only thing I pay for is Turboprint which I find better than the free stuff for printing to my Canon iP7250 and does it wirelessly, this is personal choice because the pure free stuff does work. I also run Apache for testing web stuff. I use a KDE desktop which is easy to use if you come from a Windows background and is very easily customised if needed.

One other reason I use Linux almost exclusively (I have a cube box for W7 running weather station and forecasting s/w) is that it does seem to me to be more secure by design providing you do not do silly stuff like allow root login  :o and have secure passwords (OK that's sensible on any system).

Yes some people, particularly those with very specific requirements for work, may not find what they want but for Joe Public at home I can see no reason not to use Linux in one of its flavours. Even my wife has Linux on her laptop and she did not have any issues when I removed W7 and installed Linux using KDE desktop (it's hard to notice if carefully setup) ::)

Stuart
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dee.jay

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #17 on: December 09, 2019, 03:51:00 PM »

Ah, moved another machine to full blown FreeBSD today.

My main file server was an all-in-one effort, that ran ESX 6. It then had FreeNAS with the SAS controller passed through, and a number of other VM's running on SSD's in the same box. It has worked great for a number of years, but I've found that running anything newer than ESX 6.0 causes issues with the FreeNAS VM, and whenever I wanted to change anything related to storage, I've had to shut the machine down.

So, last week I threw £190 at a Ryzen 3 3200G and Motherboard, had a spare NVMe SSD lying around, and 32GB DDR4. Bought a case, threw it all together, and it works fine with ESX6.7 - so I've moved all "internet" related VM's to that, and put FreeNAS bare metal on my server. Love it.

The storage server is a 5 year old Xeon E3-1231v3, 32GB ECC Memory, 4 x 2TB WD NAS disks.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #18 on: December 09, 2019, 05:17:29 PM »

Interesting to see a mention of FreeBSD. :)

It’ a thing that I approve of and would like to try, but never have.

The Linux boxes I operate all participate in MythTV, the ‘server’ has tuners attached, whilst the frontends have high HD graphics that depend on well-tuned driver support from the manufacturer.  Rightly or wrongly, I perceive that getting custom/hobbyist hardware to run on FreeBSD might be more arduous than with a Linux distribution?

Then again, I’ve been frustrated a few times over the years struggling with networking (eg SMB) incompatibilities between the different Linux kernels and distributions that I use.    Rightly or wrongly, I perceive FreeBSD to be a little bit more tightly controlled and less chaotic?
« Last Edit: December 09, 2019, 05:20:00 PM by sevenlayermuddle »
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dee.jay

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #19 on: December 09, 2019, 06:37:36 PM »

FreeNAS has been pretty damn awesome. My router is pfSense, so that too is FreeBSD :)

Mostly I setup FreeNAS and I've never had to touch it. It runs on ZFS and it performs its own ZFS scrubs and such.

Now, what you won't approve of... my primary desktop machine runs Windows 10, but I want to move to Linux and put Windows in a VM on top, just not got round to it. And I do have a laptop, but as I use that pretty much 99% for gaming, that will remain Windows 10, but that does need some tweaking. All my VM's that perform my various serving related tasks are ALL linux, however. (Or BSD, of course)
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #20 on: December 09, 2019, 07:00:03 PM »

Now, what you won't approve of... my primary desktop machine runs Windows 10

I can hardly criticise (this being the Linux forum), both of our desktop workstations are Mac OS, for reasons already covered. ::)

Then again, at least Mac OS has its origins in BSD and still very recognisably Unix at command line and file store layouts.

I can also understand the appeal of Microsoft for a game player, which I am not.
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dee.jay

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #21 on: December 09, 2019, 08:10:24 PM »

And, honestly it is the only real reason why I still use Windows at this point - as a gamer I pretty much have to.

However, I keep a keen eye on support in Linux. It is getting there :)
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #22 on: December 10, 2019, 01:18:18 PM »

Rightly or wrongly, I perceive FreeBSD to be a little bit more tightly controlled and less chaotic?

Not wrong at all from what I've read, hardware support is VERY limited in FreeBSD.  Its why the pfSense team do NOT recommend using it for a WiFi Access Point.

That said, even though it only supports 802.11g for the N card in my pfSense box, I put most of my IoT devices on that and they are WAY more responsive/reliable.
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dee.jay

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #23 on: December 10, 2019, 01:28:54 PM »

Hence why I have an Ubiquiti access point. I hate wireless as a rule, but needs must, I might as well do it right. That Ubiquiti AP is brilliant.

I cable where possible, though to be fair when I can get 330Mbps down to my laptop from my server, I really can't complain.
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Alex Atkin UK

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Re: What hardware do people use for Linux?
« Reply #24 on: December 12, 2019, 05:40:50 PM »

Hence why I have an Ubiquiti access point. I hate wireless as a rule, but needs must, I might as well do it right. That Ubiquiti AP is brilliant.

I cable where possible, though to be fair when I can get 330Mbps down to my laptop from my server, I really can't complain.

I finally caved and ordered a UniFi nanoHD, just sick of the random behaviour of OpenWRT and the ath10k drivers.  I used to get 600Mbit but every time the Ath10k drivers get updated, performance gets worse.  Plus being able to stick it to the ceiling above where most of my devices are seems like it might help with one of my laptops where they stupidly put the antennas in the wrist rest.

I was going to wait for WiFi 6 but I hadn't realised its not likely to be ratified until the end of next year so it seems a bad idea to buy anything until then even if they do release something, which doesn't seem likely since they just announced another AC device recently.
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