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Hardware For a Cheap Linux Desktop (phoronix.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the something-to-last-until-the-next-decade dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Outside of the limelight of Intel's Core "Skylake" processors is the cheapest model, a $60 Intel Pentium G4400 dual-core processor that runs at 3.3Gz and has built-in HD Graphics 510. Ubuntu Linux results for this CPU show the cut-down Skylake graphics are the worst aspect of this budget processor while the CPU performance is okay if speed isn't a big factor and your workloads don't mind the lack of AVX support. To pair with the cheap Skylake Pentium processors are more Intel H110-powered motherboards appearing, with some also retailing for under $60 while being basic yet functional as a severely cutdown version of the Intel Z170 chipset. If pursuing this route for a budget Linux PC, it's possible to build a socketed Skylake system for less than $200. Those of you who have recently built, or are planning out a new budget Linux machine, what internals do you recommend?

3 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Define requirements by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Naturally the answers provided here depend on the requirements (oddly enough, even geeks forget to state those)

    And why reinvent the wheel? Because Pi and like boards exist is the reason this question has almost become irrelevant. You either need something that can be solved with a "cheap" pre-built board, or you're likely in need of $300 or more in hardware.

    Requirements matter. Otherwise, you're just fucking around in the sandbox.

  2. Re:Cheap Linux Desktop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This may actually be a good thought. By one of the heavily discounted PCs (black friday/cyber monday) and just reinstall....maybe adding in some extra RAM.

  3. Re:Ubuntu performed poorly by Frederic54 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My Mint 17.2 XFCE is running quite well on my old netbook, Atom N270 (o/c to 2.0GHz), 3GB RAM and an Nvidia ION GPU, it can easily decode 1080p video using the GPU, even play some old 3D games. Coding/compiling small project is a breeze. Chrome+reddit+RES is somewhat slow sometimes.
    I even installed Win10 build 1511 on a partition, and I am impressed it is this quite fast.

    You can find this netbook for less than $100.

    --
    "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking