Wanted: urgent shopping advice for NUC-like desktop

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2021 at 13:43, Ian Bruntlett <ian.bruntlett at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Liam,
>
> On Tue, 3 Aug 2021 at 12:27, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I endorse the general advice in this article:
>> https://tedium.co/2019/06/04/used-workstation-computer-buying-strategy/
>
> Neat article, thank you for sharing :)

:-) Glad you liked it.
>
> I've had little-to-no problems putting Linux on old Dell computers/laptops for my Computer Wombling (Refurbishing) Project. I would definitely spend money on a Dell system for personal use.

Well, today, I was in the office, on day 4 of a project to reinstall
my Precision 5810 minitower. It self-destructed epically 2 weeks ago
when I was just trying to update openSUSE. It took me _weeks_ of work
to get the evil damned thing to boot off its own hard disk -- its
previous owner, a kernel engineer and Very Smart Chap, gave up on it
and just booted his kernel off a USB key.

But I think I misstepped with the update and it became unbootable
again. I've ended up having to back up my home directory, format the
HDD and start over.

It is, in a word, an evil pig of a PC.

I also had _massive_ difficulties with a colleague's Precision laptop
-- I think maybe an M6600 or something. Dual GPU (which is an ugly
kludge anyway), only USB 3 docking (barely works at the best of
times), and this tank of a dual-disk laptop doesn't even have onboard
Ethernet! They supply it with a dongle. It looks like Dell just
forgot.

Getting it to book was OK. Getting the nVidia chip driving 2 screens
on the docking station proved damned near impossible, and rendered the
built-in screen useless.

Again, horrid evil pig of a laptop.

I have a Latitude with no discrete GPU. It's all right. Nasty flat
keyboard, not enough VRAM to drive 3 screens in KDE or GNOME but it
works OK in Xfce.

Some of them are... OK. Some are nasty. You can't easily swap
motherboards or PSUs because Dell tweak the standard connectors so
they aren't standard any more -- e.g. ribbon connectors for the lights
on the fascia, that thus cannot be connected to any other motherboard.

When I say I am not a fan, I do have solid reasons.



-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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