What hardware are you using?

Discussion of hardware related issues
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

Not sure it ever TRULY will. It certainly has the ability, the gpu drivers aren't far off from WIndows in performance (yes, they're still lower, but nowhere near as much lower as they were years ago), and with flatpack & such it's easy enough to package a game if you wanted. The problem is only a few developers are willing to take the time. Now, that number is up MANY times over what it was before steambox was announced, but still...it's only a small percentage of the developers that make Windows only games.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Valve is talking about trying to make Windows games easily usableon Linux but how this is going to happen is a mystery for now. If streaming comes to pass, all this will be moot and youll be able to game on a variety of devices.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Sold a few items and bought another E6400 from my friend(really cheap), the last one he had. Its 4gb/2.53ghz just like the other one but not in quite as good a shape but still runs well. Its also got Win7 on it, so went thru the install to sanitize it and installed some apps I want to use.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Optimized the drive last night as the E6400 was a bit sluggish and that seemed to speed things up, The other two laptops are much snappier but we'll see what happens. Tested the second Eport and worked like a charm. Going to copy two of the drives as backups as well.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Being able to pull one thin lightweight panel from the bottom of the E6400 gives you access to most of the guts of the system like ram, cmos,wifi,cpu cooler/cpu to name a few. Its a great design compared to other laptops ive used. The panel isnt plastic nor flimsy so you dont worry about taking off a number of times and having issues. My E5410s use a plastic panel that isnt that easy to reinstall.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Somebody threw out a Dell E6400 ATG laptop which is the rugged/military grade version. 4gb ram, 2.4ghz cpu, no hard drive or Power adapter and the battery may not be in great shape but it works.
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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I had a couple of those ATG's at my old job. Hated the things. While they're durable, they're not anything I'd EVER want to carry.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

The advantage of the ATG is, it has panels that can be removed not only on the bottom but on the sides for cleaning and maintenance purposes. Im hoping this one runs ok as it could be the perfect beat around laptop for my job. I can pop it in a dock at work and use a larger monitor and pull it out and take it with me to the job site. Ive got to do some cleaning/testing, check the battery, then get an OS installed.

Ill post back after Ive played with it over the next week.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Excellent feature set with this laptop thart has a backlit keyboard and an ambient sensor that detects the lighting in the area and auto adjusts the display brightness. Its bright enough to see in full sunlight and with the backlit keyboard using it in the dark is equally easy. Supports 2.4/5ghz wifi, ESata port,
modular Dbay thats USB supported and thats the short list of features. Still cleaning and testing so Ill be back much later once Im finished.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Begins to show you how great Linux is when you can get such a good computing experience from a laptop sold between 2009-2011 running Linux. Ive tried lightweight distros as well as heavier distros like Zorin 12.4 and all run extremely well. This should give you pause about always buying new hardware, when in fact used hardware and in my case thrown out hardware from others, have become perfectly viable systems I use every day.

Lets hope Linux can continue to offer this experience for a long time to come.
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