[ale] Moving last win box to linux

[lollipopman691]

I can't speak to your storage needs.  I don't game either, but I am doing some 3D modeling with OpenSCAD and FreeCAD. 

I built my Daily Driver about 7 years ago after my previous desktop fell to Caps Plague ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague ).  The MB ( also from Micro Center) is a Gigabyte Aorus Z690 recommended for a Linux box by the friendly clerk also at Micro Center. It holds an Intel 12th gen Core i9, bought at the same time.

My video card is an AMD Radeon RX 580 or so that I bought at Micro Center on sale for $100 in a fit of upgrade fever. I transferred it over from my old box, so it has to be at least 8 or 9 years old. It's workin' just fine with the AMD drivers.  I've experimented on it with OpenGL by working from the famous tutorial  ( http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/ ).  Any troubles I had were my own fault. Watching videos and looking at pictures seems ok to my untutored eye.

My webcam is an el-cheapo no-name Chinese USB webcam which works fine when it's plugged in.  I use a cheap no-name mic plugged into the motherboard for occasional web meetings; also no issues. I'm sure I'd have to upgrade this stuff if I were gonna, say, do a podcast. When I want to record music I use dedicated hardware. Post-production on Audacity works ok tho.

I inherited a Canon MF4800 print/scan/fax laser printer from my mom.  IIRC I had to install the right CUPS driver, which took a little research.  I haven't bothered getting the printer's ethernet stuff workin'; when I want to print I turn it on, plug a USB cable from it into my desktop, and go from there. With that setup, it scans and prints ok fine from CUPS and XSANE.  I haven't had occasion to use the FAX stuff.  I can also access my wife's color inkjet over the local LAN. That worked out of the box.

The OS is on a 250gb SSD. My ${HOME} is on a half-terabyte spinning-rust drive. LVM takes care of the drives, upgraded from an earlier setup where it was all directly addressed.

It's all very stable on Debian 12, no complaints.

As for laptops, I splurged almost $1000 on a Framework 16, currently running Ubuntu LTS. I enjoy it, but it mostly gets used on trips. I'll probly try Trixie on it eventually.

I hope some of this helps.

-- CHS




On Saturday, September 13th, 2025 at 12:29 AM, Alex Carver via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> I've got one Windows 10 box left that I have to use for some
> Windows-only software. It's not upgradable to 11 and at this point I
> don't want Win 11 because of the extra tracking it now does (more than
> 10 ever did). I'm going to get the one-year extension to give myself
> some time but I need a few recommendations for building up a new machine
> to be a daily driver. It's been a while since I built up a full, modern
> machine for running Linux. Most of my machines have been older barebones
> hardware with minimal extras.
> 
> 0. ATX Motherboard with lots of PCIe slots because I have a few extra
> needs like an LSI 9300 SAS board and video card. Don't need RGB
> fancyness, I just need something that can support several cards, holds
> lots of RAM and isn't going to have an issue with a non-Windows OS.
> 
> 0.1 A motherboard with plenty of slots so I can install several LSI
> 9300's to build up a data server. So this one doesn't have to be high
> end since it'll run headless with many spinning drives.
> 
> 1. Best video card to support multiple Display Port monitors (at least
> three) with Linux support. The current Windows machine has a GeForce GTX
> 1660. I'm not playing games but I want good resolution support because I
> do things like CAD.
> 
> 2. Anyone know of software that would support a Canon LiDE 70 USB
> scanner? I use the scanner a lot and having something like SANE be able
> to support it would be helpful. I don't want to have to buy a new one if
> I can avoid it.
> 
> 3. Networked all-in-one printer/fax/scanner (Epson WorkForce WF-3620). I
> don't use the printer portion, I mainly use it because the scanner has a
> paper feed. Supporting the scanner portion is useful.
> 
> 4. Networked HP laser printer (M554). This is a commercial printer not a
> consumer printer so I'm assuming it should be fine with its PCL/PS support.
> 
> 5. Webcam support. I have a Logitech MX Brio. It works very well and I'd
> like to hang onto it so if it works with something in Linux that would
> be great.
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