Hardware For a Cheap Linux Desktop (phoronix.com)
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?
I've installed Ubuntu 14.04 on an AMD A8-6410 based laptop with 10GB of RAM and SSD.
The system performed sluggishly; a far cry from when 12.04 ran very well on a slower machine with just 2GB or RAM.
I don't know what they've done to it over a period of 2 years, but the dramatic slow down is just plain sad.
(Ironically Win7 ran extremely well on the same machine.)