I'm looking for a new computer, mostly for doing work. Any advice from people who have done this more recently?
I'm using Fedora and will probably stick with LXDE regardless of the available computing power. At the moment, the most demanding thing I'd like to run is probably Android Studio (which my 2012 Windows laptop struggles with before even thinking about phone emulators). I might also be interested in a Windows VM later, with other heavy IDEs. And it would be great if it was quiet. Might go up to £600, but want to avoid paying too much for things I don't actually need.
I'm considering these at the moment:
http://www.chillblast.com/business-systems/task/business-desktops
They allow not buying an OEM Windows licence (which can't be transferred to a VM), there's a lot of customisation options available and it's pretty specific about what parts you're getting. I'm trying to check compatibility on things.
I was thinking a Core i3-6100 with 8G of RAM and a small SSD.
I wonder whether PSU, case fan and CPU cooler upgrades are worth it. The person on the help chat thought the Quiet Cooling Fans are controlled by the motherboard and would probably behave fine with Linux, but they can't guarantee compatibility for any of the hardware. The Aerocool 80 PLUS 500W PSU has good reviews around for being quiet.
I wasn't planning to get a graphics card at the moment. If I get one sometime, I'd prefer a decent open-source driver over playing the latest games at the highest settings with a proprietary one. I mostly play 2D games. Searching around, seems like the integrated Skylake Graphics 530 could do a pretty good job using open-source drivers, including for low-end 3D, though support might still be a bit immature?
(My old machine has an ancient Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 using the Nouveau driver. A while back I tried running the 2D games Braid, To The Moon, and World of Goo, none of which worked, though maybe I didn't try very hard. IIRC, Kodi needed some graphics-related flag to make it not crash, so maybe other programs have similar things.)
I'm using Fedora and will probably stick with LXDE regardless of the available computing power. At the moment, the most demanding thing I'd like to run is probably Android Studio (which my 2012 Windows laptop struggles with before even thinking about phone emulators). I might also be interested in a Windows VM later, with other heavy IDEs. And it would be great if it was quiet. Might go up to £600, but want to avoid paying too much for things I don't actually need.
I'm considering these at the moment:
http://www.chillblast.com/business-systems/task/business-desktops
They allow not buying an OEM Windows licence (which can't be transferred to a VM), there's a lot of customisation options available and it's pretty specific about what parts you're getting. I'm trying to check compatibility on things.
I was thinking a Core i3-6100 with 8G of RAM and a small SSD.
I wonder whether PSU, case fan and CPU cooler upgrades are worth it. The person on the help chat thought the Quiet Cooling Fans are controlled by the motherboard and would probably behave fine with Linux, but they can't guarantee compatibility for any of the hardware. The Aerocool 80 PLUS 500W PSU has good reviews around for being quiet.
I wasn't planning to get a graphics card at the moment. If I get one sometime, I'd prefer a decent open-source driver over playing the latest games at the highest settings with a proprietary one. I mostly play 2D games. Searching around, seems like the integrated Skylake Graphics 530 could do a pretty good job using open-source drivers, including for low-end 3D, though support might still be a bit immature?
(My old machine has an ancient Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 using the Nouveau driver. A while back I tried running the 2D games Braid, To The Moon, and World of Goo, none of which worked, though maybe I didn't try very hard. IIRC, Kodi needed some graphics-related flag to make it not crash, so maybe other programs have similar things.)