2020 PC Build...

Done deal.  All the parts arrived by today, and I went ahead and built out my latest PC.  Parts of it are modern, parts are one or two generations old.  But I am hoping it will amaze me.  So far so good, the build went well and I am using it to write this post.  Without further ado...

In case you cannot read it, I installed elementary OS 5.1 Hera.  I also updated the kernel to use liquorix (an optimized kernel)... but that's all the fluff.  The hardware is as follows:

Thermaltake core V21 case.
Corsair RM850x Gold Power Supply.
32 GB of G.Skill DDR4 RAM.
ASRock Motherboard (TR4).
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920x (12 cores, 24 threads @ 3.50)
NVidia RTX 2060 SUPER.

That's the gist of it... couple of SSDs and some old-fashioned mechanical drives as well.

So far so good!  I could not, however, get Windows to install.  Installer hung.  I think it is because I am using one of the very first released CDs of Windows 10.  I will probably have to download and burn a Windows image and try that.

I do want Windows as Linux always performs well, but I am anxious to see how my games perform with this new build.  Granted, threadrippers are not meant to be "gaming" CPUs per se... but they have good single core performance and of course any games that can use multi core will flourish.  What  am anxious to see is how my 2060 SUPER performs.  Supposed to be at least 10% faster than my 1080 GTX I had.  We shall see...

Distro Hop - Back to Elementary OS...

Seems like I just can't sit still when it comes to Linux.  :)  I had thought to give KaOS or perhaps Manjaro KDE another shot... but even the lastest versions just do not seem as smooth or as polished as gtk3 based distros do, especially in the font rendering department.

So... I wanted something different and thought I would give Elementary another shot.  The latest version is decent...  looks great, of course, better than screenshots show.  Not sure why that is but it looks better right in front of you than in a screenshot.

The install went VERY smoothly, even configuring it to run BTRFS on the system drive.  When it came time to format the disk I simply selected the old Pop!_OS device and told it to format as btrfs, then let the installer take it the rest of the way.  Worked perfectly first try.  It also installed Nvidia drivers for me, and the entire system worked very well.

I then proceeded to make a few adjustments, like increasing the DPI, and installing the Liquorix kernel (https://liquorix.net/, follow the instructions for ubuntu).  The kernel installation did not fully succeed and, while I got the new kernel, my graphics drivers were broken.  So then I simply snagged the Nvidia 340.64 driver and performed a manual install.  To do that you simply turn off the graphical interface (systemctl set-default multi-user.target), reboot and as root run the Nvidia installer.  Once that completes you restore graphical mode (systemctl set-default graphical.target), reboot again and *boom*, graphics fixed.

The thing about Elementary is its controlled simplicity.  Like KaOS, the devs don't really want you messing around too much with your system.  There is a nice store to install the apps you MUST HAVE, but beyond that you have to sort of fend for yourself.  But, the one thing about it is, this is an Ubuntu-based distro.  That means you really DO have a ton of possibilities at your fingertips.  You just don't want to muck around too much with the desktop environment, but under the hood you can do a lot, and just about any application you might really need is available.  If not, you will probably be able to find a debian package for it somewhere, OR you can install and use flatpak or AppImage or whatever other application isolation subsystem floats your boat.

...And on to Debian...

You know me, never satisfied standing still and to be honest, Pop!_OS has been less stable of late.  Every update was bringing me more problems, so I figured it was time to try something different.

I waffled between ElementaryOS and Debian.  I went back and forth a couple of times in one day and settled on Debian.  Debian is the base OS for many major distributions, and is more flexible in general than Elementary.

I installed the Debian "testing" version with Gnome preconfigured.  I then installed Nvidia proprietary drivers... and hacked away at odds and ends that I like to have on my systems, including fleshing out a conky.

There were a few issues and in fact two of the security repositories were broken from the start.  I had to disable them in order to do anything with my system.  Once disabled I was able to move on and get my system set up to a more or less stable configuration.

The reason I did NOT choose ElementaryOS was because I knew I would have to do a few backend hacks to get the UI where I wanted it it.  EOS is gorgeous, no doubt, but there are some things I want to have that Elementary does not provide out of the box.  I will probably hang with Debian for a week and then if the whim strikes, install Elementary.

Oh, there is ONE thing that is not Debian-specific... and that is the tracker-miners/tracker-extract processes.  I don't know what triggers it exactly but they wail the tar out of my system (probably indexing everything for the first time)... I end up with a freeze and sometimes even a deadlock/hang because they consume ALL 32 GBs of my RAM AND ALL of my Swap space.  That is absurd and should NEVER happen.  Gnome team needs to work on that.

Elementary OS, part 2

Moving along, I found a very very simple screen capture/recording application that seems like it will meet my recording needs:  Kazam.  Very few options... you can select the output type, location and where you want sound recorded from.  Boom.

Now I just need to find a decent video editing tool.  I am tempted to see if I can install my windows tool in Wine, but... let's see if there are any super-simple drag and drop tools out there already.

Elementary OS

Well, despite my attachment to Steam on Windows, I decided to shift back to Linux.  I did a little research and, while I appreciate the efficiency of Slack, Arch or some other distro, I went with a little more flash and simplicity at the same time.

Elementary OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution.  It has a strong following and a solid development community (I donated money for the download to help keep that alive).

Elementary OS is designed to look somewhat like Mac OS X, but not quite... it borrows elements.

It had been a few years since I had last used Linux of any flavor (or BSD for that matter) but so far it has been relatively painless.  The download was quick, and I was able to push the ISO onto a small USB stick, boot into it and kick off the installation process.

Installation was simple but I wish they had a simpler process for allocating mount points; I have a pretty messed up set up, but that is all on me, not the fault of the distro.  Anyway, after several clicks the installation process plowed through and the system rebooted, I pulled out the USB stick and I had a full blown version of Elementary up and running on my PC.

The next part that took most of the day was getting it configured (read app installs) to the way I wanted it.  This included installing Wine/PlayOnLinux so I could install my favorite games:  Diablo 3 and Star Stable Online.  Believe it or not it was pretty painless and I have both games running... and in fact, SSO runs BETTER in Wine than it did on Windows 10 with all UI options checked.  Weird.  Diablo 3 is a little stuttery at times, but fully playable.

I still need to do some tweaking so I can record and such... but at the time I am writing this I am listening to Pandora, texting my daughter on Skype and earlier created a presentation for a Sunday school class...  pretty much anything I need or want to do on my PC is here... and in fact the development environment is better than Windows.

Well that is it for me for now.  I will try to update soon.