[conspire] new computer?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Dire Red (deirdre at deirdre.net):

> In contrast to what Rick says, a lot of Black Friday specials are
> older models. The catch is that many of them may be underpowered for
> Linux.

Deirdre had this information about the models typically offered on Black
Friday (of which I was unaware), so I asked if she'd kindly post it.
(Thanks!)

The key to figuring out if the system is going to be anaemic is
_research_.  This is the one fatal error I find that people purchasing
new systems tend to make: buying something on the spot and taking it
home, rather than writing down the make/model and any applicable options
bundles of promising offerings, going home, and spending some time
looking up their particulars (from a Linux perspective) on the Internet.
One heuristic that's useful is to make a list of the constituent
chipsets (ethernet, sound, wireless, video, etc.) and look up each such
chip model + the word 'Linux' with a Web search engine.

The result may end up being the same purchase, but a forewarned one,
e.g., you know you can install your favourite distro except you'll want
it on wired ethernet for initial Internet access in order to fetch
post-installation the required firmware BLOB file for the damned
Broadcom wireless chip.

In general terms, RAM is the most vital thing.  Lots of it, not of
inexcusably slow varieties, and preferably with the ability to expand to
a decently high amount.  It's 2018, so 16GB of RAM probably should be 
routine (disclaimer: I haven't looked, and my knowledge of the market is
out of date).  If not, wonder why.

Again, I haven't checked the state of the market, but I'll guesstimate
that although DDR4 RAM is enticing, it's still breathtakingly expensive
compared to DDR3 -- leading to a futureproofing dilemma.  (Amirite?)

All of the major manufacturers have product _series_ (lines) aimed at
the 'home' market, that characteristically are shoddy and limited, and
that in general I consider to be sucker bait.  For example, HP has
Pavillion, Dell has Dimension, Inspiron, and XPS[1], Acer has Aspire,
Toshiba has Satellite, and Lenovo has IdeaPad.  I would recommend
entirely avoiding those, in favour of 'business' product lines, as a
ground-floor filter against cheap schlock that will be somewhat
inadequate from the get-go.  'Business' product lines tend to cost a bit
more.  You get better value over time because their economic service
life is substantially longer, plus they Suck Less[tm] during those
service lives.

Don't forget that a unit with one annoying driver problem might
nonetheless be fine _if_ it's modular in that area.  The classic example
would be a laptop that comes bundled with a Linux-hostile wireless chip,
with the saving grace that the wireless functionality is on a mini-PCI
card that's easily removed and replaced with an equivalent cheap
aftermarket mini-PCI subboard using an Intel wireless chip.


[1] XPS are supposed to be higher-performance, thus the
fashionable-in-2000s-marketing 'X' thing (standing for Xtreme
Performance System), but they were still pretty shoddy, IMO, and also
Nvidia-heavy.


> So, the drivers may be out there already, just make sure you're not hosing yourself on the RAM and/or drive space…in addition to the graphics drivers things. On the NVIDIA question, I'm personally not a fan, but you do you.
> 
> Deirdre
> 
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