Subject: Re: Feedback on the configuration I am considering

From: Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2025 17:42:29 -0400

On Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:09:27 -0700
Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Currently I am running Kubuntu on a 10 year old Dell that I upgraded
> to 16GB of RAM (Years ago) and an SSD drive.
> 
> I have an old laptop running Win10 that came with a NVMe SSD and I
> have since upgraded to 16G of RAM and I added a 500G laptop hard
> drive (I have several just laying around).
>
> 
> On the Win box I installed VirtualBox  which allows me to create 
> different vhosts (lamp).  I also use the Win box for recording videos
> as well editing.

Can you find Linux based programs to create and edit videos? This would
be an excellent time to free yourself of Windows for good.

> 
> I wrote an Amazon S3 PHP SDK script that allows me to backup my 
> production websites.
> 
> I was thinking at some point in the future I was going to build a 
> monster computer to do all these things.
> 
> Now I am thinking I can buy a simple shared hosting account and
> offload the VBox. I can make a subdomain for each of my projects and
> configure my Amazon S3 PHP SDK script to backup each project

I doubt any kind of "cloud" (somebody else's computer) will compete
with what you call a "monster computer".

Given that you've been working just fine with a couple old computers
with 16GB RAM and 500 to 1000GB of storage, I imagine a regular 6 core,
12 thread computer with 64 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe and 10TB 72RPM spinning
rust will do you just fine. I put one of those together in 2020 for
about $2200, but today such a computer is pretty much a commodity, so
you can probably do it a lot cheaper. I normally keep my computers for
5 years, so that would be less than $500 a year I spent on my computer.
You appear to keep you computers twice that interval, and the computer
would probably cost you $1800 (would have been less before all this
tariff bullshit), so you'll be paying $180/year for what you would
think is a blindingly fast computer that you can still be using 10
years from now, long after your current two computers are unable to run
a current browser.

And as far as your shared hosting accounts, those things get sold, and
the new owners destroy them, and your data becomes unavailable to you
but available to bad guys, and the price of shared hosting will probably
increase with time.

Oh, and backups: If your win10 machine has a USB3 port, convert to
Linux, plug in a (non-seagate) USB driven hard disk, and use rsync.

> 
> I still need to record and edit videos.

If you absolutely, positively can't record and edit videos on Linux,
then you need to buy a pretty good Win11 machine, and take the hit when
Win12 replaces Win11.

> I'm thinking I only need a simple laptop at that point - 4 cores, 32G
> of RAM, and an SSD drive, running Kubuntu.

You can probably buy that hardware used, for under $600.00. Extra
points if you have a desktop format so you can actually repair,
maintain and enhance it.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2023 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

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