Lainons Setup

I've been looking for workstation, server and laptop setups, and I figured out I should make a thread instead of keep looking for an answer that modern internet won't provide. I'm interested in what computer setup lainons use, how they use it, and why they made such choice. I don't want to start a thread on which OS/kernel, editor, or browser is better. I just want to share my journey and read about opinions on how to get the high tech working while having a low life. What is your setup? How do you use it? Why is it like that? Browsing? Programming? Video editing? Video consuming? Do you turn it off every night or only when strictly required? Do you have a desktop, a workstation, a laptop, or a server? All of them? How do you switch between them? What do you think it is a good used or refurbished computer? How do you usually refurbish it? Re-pasting it with Artic MX6? TPM? Do you care about power consumption? How do you deal with that? I remember I started with a simple machine, with a stupidly old Intel Core 5 2nd gen, just because I wanted to run some Hackintosh OSX on a cheap budget. In the end, I should have chosen to max the CPU and RAM for running OSX inside a VM. Later, I got a MacBook Pro 13" early 2015, where I chose to max the RAM to 16GB. That ended up serving me very well with VMs, and it was easy enough to swap SSD, service the battery and play with Linux and stuff. I also started building a PC for gaming, I finished DOOM 2016 on Gentoo, even if it crashed on last level for some reason. This Ryzen 5 2600 and RX580 combo is still my main gaming desktop, which I continuously switch to when I want to play. I ended up buying a new monitor and using it for this purpose only, but I may end up going for a single workstation solution. I also wanted to try out the Thinkpad meme: grabbed a x240 (I should have taken an x230), and kept using that as main laptop (old gen i3), and played a ton lot with OpenBSD. Meanwhile, I played with Raspberry Pi (which died), with Raspberry Pi 3 (SD died). These SBC systems do not keep up with a workload such as media sharing, since the BUS is shared between USB, Ethernet, and the SD Card. I decided to upgrade, and a friend of mine suggested a Dell Optiplex. This helped me running some services, such as IRC, Docker, Sonarqube, and playing "the little sysadmin". I then upgraded to a Dell Precision 5810 with a 4c/8t, which I underuse because of simple and lightweight private services such as Samba, Gitea, and IRC client with tmux. I still prefer this over non-ECC computers. From the old MacBook Pro and the X240, I then upgraded to a used Precision 5530, realizing that I usually don't need all that GPU power, especially if that harms the battery when traveling. For as much I liked Fedora, it is too unstable for the life I want to have (also fuarrrk NVIDIA). Then, I grabbed a cheap Latitude 7420, which served well during many weeks of conferences, where the workload was opening Firefox to download paper, edit notes on Emacs, and SSH home server to run some Python experiments. Lately, I've been sitting a lot at home, and using the laptop as desktop makes me think I'm torturing it when I ask it to do desktop things. Moreover I never power it off. Then, I decided to get a used Dell Precision 5820 as suggested by an important lainon. The idea is to keep everything there with expandable bay and all the bells and whistles that I may want, including the gaming and the local experiments when they are small enough to fit my computer before offloading them to a server. I see myself keeping a tidy filesystem, with documents well separated from the OS, using symbolic links to "install" my configuration and programs, using ~/probe or ~/opt links to a separate SSD or HDD, and taking regular backups of such data. My philosophy is simplifying sorting files on one machine, having no-brainer backups with borg, pulling backups from servers (e.g. gitea) and pushing configurations and tasks to server from one main computer. Then, it comes to the following question: how shall I connect back to my ongoing work when traveling? I already have a VPS that I use also as VPN to connect back home, where I believe Samba and tmux could be good enough for remote maintenance. I wish to overcome the X11/Emacs limitations, but SSH+tmux serve me well. I wish I could run Noita, just like other small games on OpenBSD, but they work perfecly on Debian, so I'll end up keeping Debian, even if I dislike SystemD and Linux. I end up reading, writing latex and running Scheme REPL a lot lately, and this seems a good enough solution to me. I have a big ultrawide (21:9) monitor and a good keyboard that I like, and do not want to have a KVM switch. Maybe I'll get a proper monitor. I would like to get just a single not-too-big 3:2 monitor. Do you have any suggestions? Image: https://analognowhere.com/_/hicnrc/

>>93212 People care too much about tool choice, not enough discussion about what they do with these tools. Use whatever is comfortable, who cares if you use vim or Emacs or Geany, or whether you use a fourteen year old junktop or a multi-GPU liquid-cooled rig, would be more interesting to know what you're doing. Developing programs? Maybe making music? Tools can be an interesting topic rarely, like if somebody made tracker music and they're like 'btw I made this on an old Amiga I had to repair', yeah that is sick to know, but if you just tell me you use an Amiga I'm imagining you sitting there powering it on and clicking aimlessly for five minutes, then going back to a chan to talk about text editors for the thirtieth time this year. Feels like reading a very long preface of a novel you've never read before, and you suddenly become aware that it's talking about some commentator who said something about the book the current author wants to dispell, when you didn't even know this and don't know the section of the book it's talking about.

>>93216 Probably not many can share what they really do daily. I mostly do programming. I don't know when I'll be finally comfortable enough with my rig. Currently, I'm using the computer to push computational experiments on servers. Before doing so, I need to tune some parameters, and I do that by running small tests locally. Then, it is just waiting and monitoring for tasks to finish. I usually maintain some services. Sometimes I do some quick fixes on websites I volunteered for. Sometime I need to spin up a Windows VM to compile something for people that prefer Windows. There is not just one thing. Shall I saturate the computer or have enough room to breath and then maybe get distracted? When does one feel comfortable with a setup? For the programming side, I shall resist the urge to create a new thread on /lambda/. At least for now. I'm writing a small computer algebra system, for the fun of learning, the fun of writing my own stuff, and lately because it is actually faster than current tools that I have. I get a REPL inside Emacs, and write there functions and programs to test those functions. Sometimes it annoys me to have '>' locking my history, but maybe it's some Paredit bug I didn't look up yet. I iterate on various versions of functions, until I get a final form that I paste on the appropriate file. I write tests in a separate files and check regularly that I didn't break anything. I then increment slowly the library by adding new functions. And I try to keep a log of what I have done. People forget how useful this is. I follow most recent papers on arxiv and eprint, and try to get the best out of them even if I'm a bad reader. I try to archive websites that I find interesting, either using someone else's server or by using my own. It proved to be a good practice to take regular snapshots of your friends blog before they decide to shutdown. All of this is obvious now, but it wasn't back then. This is part of the main topic: get the "obvious" out for people that does not see it yet. Maybe I should have clarified this. It never happened, but I would like to never loose my archives. Am I getting a tool that is too fast for me to think about what I am doing? I remember when my computer and my internet connection were slow. I had to choose what to do. Now I don't have to choose. Am I lost forever? I used to distrohop, and now I don't need it anymore. Where am I going? Where should I go? I feel like after mastering enough programming and math, it doesn't mean anything. You see that it is possible, and stop there without ever making it. Because when you see it is possible you start thinking that it is not worth your time. Also, I do not want to hop into the AI train, not even local AI stuff. What else am I missing? I believe that after Covid more and more people got a laptop to "work from home", even if it ended up being a desktop replacement and worst resource allocation. I'll go back scrolling or something. Image: shapoco

I just have to wage slave tall aspect ratios. It is my autism. I have a 2:3 and the LG Dualup 18:16 meme screen. I adore them both. Bad for video and games, but for productivity/browsing the internet, it really is peak. To address the rest of your question, I have various thinkpads and Intel Macs woth Linux I use as needed or tinker with occasionally, but I mainly use my desktop. Sever-wise, I have low needs, and your needs will drastically change your setup.

93357 Why not use a normal 16/9 screen and rotate it?

93358 I actually do as my 3rd monitor, but much prefer the 18:16 meme. Also, the 2:3 is my main display and by far the most important to have, since a vehicle 9:16 is totally a fine substitute for the DualUp

InWin slim case PC build with recycled parts. I realize slim builds are dead with the advent of mini PCs but I love the challenge of balancing power requirements and exhausting heat with the least noise possible. I'm not a gamer so I've found other ways to stress test the setups over the years including CPU, GPU and harddrive mining, running drive read/write speed tests, etc.

Two Monitors, Garuda Linux Kde as desktop, I use Kate and obsidian for notes and program with whatever is on hand.