[ubuntu-za] New Computer

[Lee Sharp]

On 09/28/2012 12:41 AM, Bill Cairns wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 7:13 AM, frans <dormakorp at vodamail.co.za> wrote:
>
>> My first question usually are what will the system be used for?

> Lee's machine sounds wonderful, but I think that I could get rid of
> all the other machines in the house too if I had one like that!

I have to say, I agree with Frans' first assessment.  And I am somewhat 
embarrassed about my specs...  I did not mean to start a competition. :) 
  I actually was reluctant about spending that kind of money on a 
system, right until I did it.  (My opinion sure changed then)

That said, what is good now will not be good enough far sooner than you 
think.  My old system has 4 gig of ram.  It is maxed out.  It is now the 
backup and test system.  It has some extra drive space, and does 
moderate services.  (file, print, web)  It is still a good computer, but 
it now longer does the thing I do without some significant effort.

The new system does some VM stuff.  I have an ubuntu server vm up full 
time for various tasks, and windows XP, Vista, and 7 that I spin up when 
needed for client testing and support.  Also, a FeeBSD, and CentOS for 
when needed, and a few others.  But mostly I just use the memory for 
lots of web tabs.  I think I have about 50 open right now.  It is 
amazing how much of a difference the extra memory makes when you do not 
have to shout down firefox to open a big image in gimp, or Pitivi, or 
whatever.  To summarize, I can not recommend enough, more memory.

As to Bill' system...  You will notice a difference between 8 and 16 gig 
of memory.  Seriously.  Do you need 24?  Probably not.  But right now I 
have only one very small (512 meg of ram) VM running...

lee at tc-us-dev01:~$ free -mo
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        24160      15395       8764          0        382       9763
Swap:       70780          0      70780


Either way, the Gigabyte board is a good choice.

			Lee