To Tux or not to Tux

Tue Apr 19 10:15:58 MST 2016

On 04/18/2016 11:18 PM, Wayne D wrote:
> It's a 4 core machine and the user is not happy with the speed AND has 
> complained of heat issues.  This machine is VERY important.  He makes 
> his living using apps on this machine. Downtime must be kept to a 
> absolute minimum.  Apps are 50% Web based and 50% local WINDOWS ONLY 
> software.
> MY solution:  Build a a new HYBRID machine that hardware for hardware 
> is a updated clone of my own primary machine.  Based on LinuxMINT 17.3 
> Cinnamon and run win10 inside a VM for those apps that require it and 
> run chrome or Firefox for the web based stuff from the Linux side..   
> Backups via clonezilla and copies of the vm file.
This is what I've done since moving to linux in '06 and still dealing 
with windoze-only crapware.  Over the years, I just reduced my 
dependency on needing windoze at all, replacing software needed with oss 
variants as needed.  Visio is the only reason I still use it, and 
gotomeeting/webex for customer interaction (bad vendors, uberconference 
ftw).

Use virtualbox with "seamless" mode, all the windoze apps run windowed 
to be less annoying overall, and you can hide the disgrace mostly of 
still using it.  :)

Backups I just target what is really important to me and occasionally 
rsync (or more frequent work stuff).

> The new machine will consist of:
> ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 8 x SATA 6GB/s USB 
> 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS (MILITARY GRADE MB)
I stopped buying asus mobos - every one I have owned in the past 10 
years or so has been quirky or just failed in odd ways, and last time I 
went Gigabyte.  Look at newegg reviews, usually there are as many 1 star 
reviews for as many 5 star and others combined for Asus (somehow usually 
end up just looking mediocre).  Gigabyte seemed to have much less 
reviewer angst and far less 1-star reviews.  Mine has been good so far 
with an i7-4000k.

> 16Gb (4x4) G.SKILL Sniper Series 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900)
If using windoze (7 is as new as I've ever used), remember it will want 
a good 8gb of ram, and using it with office, I'll occasionally still 
have the thing hit swap.  Now you have 4gb for linux, which should get 
you 3 or 4 chrome tabs.  Max out your ram, I put no less than 32gb in 
mine, and lately running multiple work instances, test servers, etc, I 
push that.

Next update I'm planning to get a xeon board with 8 slots and probably 
just go 128gb to avoid oom's again.

> AMD FX-8370 Black Edition 8 Core CPU Processor AM3+ 4300Mhz 125W 16MB
Whatever flavor proc you like really.

> Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD  BOOT DRIVE
Consider 2x SSD's.  I do this, use mdraid to raid-0, one partition is 
your /boot, rest is LVM, in my case luks volume, then lvm.  SSD's die, 
commonly in my experience, so always have 2 so you can run and find 
another before the other dies too.   This has saved my bacon now at 
least 3 times testing various vendor ssd's, and so far, samsung seems 
the best to me.

> WD Black 7200 Rpm 1TB DATA drive
See above, spinners die too.  Raid-0 any volume set imho.  Consider just 
getting an external nas like Synology or Drobo to keep data on, backups, 
etc.  I just keep os disks in my system, and consider that disposable as 
a /tmp drive.  My work data I work live from off my nas and rsync it as 
stated above to laptop and other backup disks occasionally.

I officially hate all spinner drive vendors, they all acquired/inbred 
with each other you never know what you're getting anymore.  Seagate was 
ok until buying maxtor, then not knowing what you're getting is a 
problem, as maxtor's sucked terribly.  Same with the IBM/Hitachi/WD 
Deathstar drives, I didn't like WD prior for rashes of bad drives, but 
blend in some Deathstar, I'll just avoid the whole vendor.  I'm glad I 
haven't needed big spinners in a while.  :\

> Thermaltake Commander MS-I Snow Edition VN40006W2N No PS Mid Tower Case
>
> LG Electronics 14x Internal BDXL Blu-Ray Burner Rewriter WH14NS40
>
> Antec Earthwatts 650W ATX12V/EPS12V 650 Energy Star Certified Power 
> Supply EA-650 Platinum
>
> VisionTek Radeon 7750 SFF 1GB DDR3 3M (2x HDMI, miniDP) Graphics Card 
> - 900574
If linux, note amd video cards just damn suck.  Now, recent experience 
tells me the oss driver does not suck anymore, and is actually far more 
stable/performing in general than the binary driver was with 4k displays 
or my 1080p displays.  I'd highly recommend nvidia here, I'm planing my 
escape route purchase to defect to nvidia finally too, their drivers are 
just simply better, and they're more responsive to features (like 
wayland) while amd sits on their thumb.

>
> 3 - Noctua NF-F12 PWM Cooling Fans
>
> Thermaltake NiC C5 cpu cooler with 2 push-pull 120mm fans 99 cfm
>
>
> THE QUESTION TO ALL OF YOU:   DOES THIS SEEM A VIABLE SOLUTION to YOU?
If it's important, raid your disks, but otherwise, quite.
>
>
> Thanks for your replies.
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