[ale] Size does count.

[JK]

Vernard Martin wrote:

>I'm thinking about upgrading my linux desktop. The current one is a 1Ghz 
>Athlon with 1GB of ram and 20GB hard drive (I have my music collection 
>on another machine).
>
>I've always been a fan of small, quiet computers so I'm thinking that 
>this time I'll buy something new that fits both of those requirements.
>The problem is that I'm not nearly as up to speed as I used to be on 
>ultra-small or ultra-quiet machines. So I'm hoping to draw upon the 
>extremely diverse, eclectic and geeky nature of the ALE mailling list to 
>help me out here.
>
>Any ideas? I've seen the Shuttle boxen but for the most part they are 
>designed more for size than quiet. And I've seen the Antec cases but 
>they are designed for quiet and not size. I'm greedy and I want both. 
>And I'm willing to pay to get it. I've been looking at the Apple Minis 
>but since I plan on running Linux, it seems like a waste of money since 
>the hardware inside of it isn't supported as well under Linux as it is 
>under MacOS (Damn you Steve Jobs. Damn you to hellllllllll!)
>  
>
I have purchased two Mac Minis over the past year (one for wife and 
daughter, respectively),
and I could not be more delighted.  Considering that OSX is just BSD 
plus some proprietary
window dressing, it's almost like running an open-source OS.  You get a 
complete development
environment and an X server, so most of your beloved OSS apps can be 
"./configure;make'd" on
OSX. (But -- and this amazes me -- the complete installation procedure 
for most pre-built
binaries on OSX is, "Drag the program to your hard drive." Period. It 
Just Works.) These boxes
are tiny, and dead silent. And nicely equipped, they are around $600.  
So I'd say, don't let lack of
Linux hardware support stop you from dipping your toes in the OSX water. 
You can prob'ly grab
a PPC Mini on eBay for a couple hundred bucks, now that Apple isn't 
selling them any more
(they've gone totally Intel).

Just MHO. And apologies for the total lack of Linux content.

Cheers,

-- JK