
The Linux Setup, Noah Lorang, 37signals - jrgifford
http://www.mylinuxrig.com/post/18755288267/the-linux-setup-noah-lorang-37signals
======
jdludlow
== The article itself

I wish that it went into more detail on the hardware choices that he used. I'm
constantly toying with the idea of building a Linux box for dev work, but then
get lost in the morass of hardware options. The high level description of his
system sounds perfect (tons of RAM, fast drives, and triple monitors), but I'm
not sure how to get there.

== My own dilemma

Every line of production code that I write is done in Linux - in a VM running
on OS X. The killer app that keeps me on OS X is 1Password. It's too useful,
and I haven't found a suitable Linux replacement. Any suggestions?

The other "killer" is that it's extremely simple to get a great computer by
pulling up the Apple Store site and clicking "buy this thing." Building my own
is something I would have done a decade ago, but I've since lost track of what
all of the hardware lingo means, or which companies are making decent
components.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I use KeepassX on Linux. I'm not sure if it's missing features that 1Password
has, but it works great for me.

For hardware, the Apple Store sells great laptops, but for desktops, it sucks.
You can either get an underpowered mini for the price of a powerful Linux
desktop or you can get an overpowered but out of date Mac Pro for the price of
a small car. (OK, slight exaggeration).

I highly recommend the Anandtech buyer's guides for figuring out what you want
in a desktop. [http://www.anandtech.com/show/5184/holiday-midrange-
system-b...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5184/holiday-midrange-system-
buyers-guide/4) seems like an excellent starting point.

Also, don't be afraid of overclocking. You can get a LOT of extra performance
for little effort on an i5-2500k or i7-2600k. My box has been stable at 4.7GHz
for months, and it's speeded up my compile times immensely. It'd probably also
be stable at 4.8GHz, but I bumped it down one notch just to give myself some
headroom.

~~~
hollerith
>You can either get an underpowered mini for the price of a powerful Linux
desktop

Have you considered the cost of electricity? Power consumption at idle on the
average desktop is like 4 or 5 times that of the mini. Also the mini sleeps
and wakes quickly and reliably, and probably draws less power sleeping that a
normal desktop draws when powered off. (You have to either unplug the normal
desktop or flip the switch on the back of the power supply to get zero power
consumption.)

There's also the noise issue: an idling 2011 mini can be heard in a quiet room
if you are very close to it, but you would not notice unless you are listening
for it.

P.S. I am curious whether Linux on modern hardware sleeps and wakes quickly
and reliably. When I ran Linux (on hardware made in the 1990s) I kept it
powered on and "awake" (not sleeping) continuously because that was the only
way I could always sit down and start typing. In contrast, I usually sleep my
2011 mini when I walk away from it.

~~~
cmhamill
Okay, let's use evidence.

Anecdotal, but numerical.

The current Mac Mini is supposed to pull between 10W (at idle) and 85W (at
load---this is the limit of what the PSU can take from the wall.[0]

Let's be generous and say that the Mac Mini, if left on continuously without
sleeping, pulls on average 20W.

Let's be pessimistic and assume that power costs you $0.20 per kWh.

# The time in which the Mini will use 1 kWh

1000 Wh / 20 W = 50 hr

# The number of hours in one year

365 days * 24 hrs = 8760 hrs

# The number of kWh the Mini will use in one year

8760 hrs / 50 hrs = 175.2

# Cost of running the Mini continuously for one year

175.2 kWh * $0.20 per kWh = $35.04

That's amazing, no? Let's say, then, that you bought a mini for $599 dollars;
your cost of ownership would be 599 + 35.04n, where n is the number of years
you've owned it.

No doubt impressive.

A desktop I built relatively recently, which a Core i5 and an unnecessary
graphics card, along with a few hard drives, pulls roughly 60W at idle and
150W at load (measured at the outlet by a Kill-a-Watt).

Let's be not-so-generous and say my machine pulls 100W on average, is left on
continuously, and my electricity costs $0.20 / kWh.

My computer will use a kWh in 10 hours (1000 / 100); and will cost $175.20 per
year to operate ((8760 / 10) * 0.2).

My initial cost for this machine (excluding monitor, keyboard, etc.) was $450.
SO my cost of ownership is 450 + 175.2n.

The cost of ownership for east will equal in :

599 + 35.04n = 450 + 175.2n

149 = (175.2 - 35.04)n

149 / 140.16 = n

n = 1.06 years

So after a year of ownership the Mini becomes "worth it," if power consumption
if your first requirement.

Note however, that I've given the Mini every benefit of the doubt possible,
did not take significant steps to minimize the power consumption of my
machine, am able to upgrade my machine piecemeal instead of discretely (and
thus have significantly lowered future costs of ownership), and have assumed
we've been leaving the machines on continuously.

The Mac Mini, let's say, pulls 0W when in S3 sleep.

My machine pulls 1W in S3 sleep, and about 0.2W when off (to answer your
query, it wakes reliably and quickly).

If we assume my machine is asleep half of the time:

Half the time (8760 / 2 = 4380 hrs), my machine pulls 1W. While asleep, it
will take 1000 hrs to use 1 kWh. Therefore, it uses 4.38 kWh in the time it is
asleep.

Which means the new yearly cost is:

(175.2 / 2) + (4.38 * .2) = 87.6 + 8.76 = 96.36

The Mini ends up costing $17.50 yearly.

So:

599 + 17.5n = 450 + 96.36n

149 = 78.86n

n = 1.889 years

Once you factor in the cost of replacing the Mini versus upgrading a small bit
of my machine, I think the answer is much less clear cut.

P.S. I don't mean to pick on you, but excitement about power consumption that
doesn't factor in the numbers is a pet peeve. The Mac Mini is only "worth" it
if having the computer you _actually_ want is worth less that $80 or so per
year to you.

[0]: <https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3468> Edit: formatting.

~~~
hollerith
Thanks for the informative reply. (I had done the math, but my notes were not
at hand.)

>My machine pulls 1W in S3 sleep . . . it wakes reliably and quickly

On Windows or Linux? (My interest is mainly what it is like on Linux.)

~~~
cmhamill
Linux. S3 sleep doesn't work in Windows, for reasons I haven't bothered to
figure out. I only use Windows to play games, so I never had reason to care
that it didn't go to sleep.

------
jbarham
"I’m using a pretty basic home-assembled machine — Intel Core i7 processor, 32
GB RAM, SSD for applications and 3x 1TB HDs in a RAID for data..."

Clearly his definition of a "basic" machine is different from mine. Or maybe
I'm just getting old...

------
jonstjohn
On the keyboard front - wasn't realy aware of the differences between
mechanical and non-mechanical, although I've been using a Kinesis Advantage
Pro for several years now and love it. It appears to use the Cherry MX brown
switches (<http://www.elitekeyboards.com/support.php>) also used by the Filco
keyboard mentioned in the article. Does anybody else have experience w/ Filco
keyboards? I switched to the Kinesis primarily for the form factor.

~~~
neotorama
I think almost every mechanical keyboard feels the same. What makes the
difference is the switches under the key cap.

Black: linear, hard, no sound. Brown: tactile, no sound. Blue: tactile, clicky
sound

I use KBC Poker with red Cherry. Light, linear and no sound.

~~~
tikhonj
I have a keyboard with brown switches and while they are quieter than blue
ones, saying they produce "no sound" is quite an exaggeration. They still have
a nice clicky sound and are much louder than normal keys. I actually like
this, but it is something to keep in mind.

------
RexRollman
I love reading stuff like this. But then again, I also enjoy viewing
screenshots and reading about people's uptime.

~~~
kayoone
same here, thought i might be weird ;)

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tristan_juricek
The fact he rarely uses a notebook fits my own experience. How many developers
actually develop out in cafes, or do so many presentations that you'd need a
mobile computer? Probably better to customize a workstation like this then
sweat about mobility. (For that, we have phones.)

~~~
silversmith
My main development machine is a 13" Air. Before that, it was 15" MBP. Have
developed from university. Done great work in a bus. Fixed production quirks
from a conference.

When I'm at my desk, the laptop is closed and connected to a beast of a
monitor, external keyboard and mouse. It becomes a workstation. But when I
want the mobility, it's there. Even if only to scurry off to a unoccupied
conference room for bit of silence, it's very valuable for me. It's easily
worth the ~700$ above the cost of a immobile box every two years.

As for performance, I've yet to feel constrained by the Air. But then again, I
code mainly web apps in ruby, so no fiddling of thumbs while things compile -
the most of time is lost waiting on database server. And my brain to come up
with a solution.

------
th0ma5
I was looking for a netbook or laptop, and i ought to dig more, but I gave up
that afternoon because the M$ tax started to piss me off. Anyone have much
luck not having to pay for windows outside of a pieced-together system?

~~~
ohgodthecat
There used to be offers here: <http://shop.lenovo.com/us/thinkpad-laptops-
with-dos.shtml> looks to be nonexistant now though.

<https://www.system76.com/> is pretty popular in some circles

~~~
zalew
It bothers me that s76 decided to stick nvidia in there, like to make sure
that if you drop Ubuntu in favor of Debian or some other distro, you'll get
annoyed with all the driver mess.

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mkramlich
That reminded me of the 2 shotgun no-brainers I recommend to anyone wanting to
beef up their computer: SSD and ridiculous amounts of RAM.

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shareme
I am in the same boat as I do not want to use Mac equipment.

Laptops: I have good experience with Toshiba both AMd and Intel cpus..my next
laptop will be an i7 Toshiba.

As far as build desktop I might not have to as there are some basic HP desktop
PCs on sale that with 1 gig dedicated graphics that you could install SSD into
and than supply two LCDs and a network NAS for under $2500.

That is of course you have choice between 2nd generation i7 and the AMD FX
series cpus

And of course if you need to add a graphics tablet it will bring it up to
$3000..but still not bad..

------
cmsj
Terminator \o/

