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...

My 2020 Build

I had originally planned on a new build mid-2019, but due to vacations, and other things that seemed like a very bad idea, money-wise.

Every couple of years I build out a new PC.  Usually that PC has all-new, better hardware but this year I am backing off that just a little because, well, I've always wanted a thread ripper and the Gen 1 thread rippers are are dirt cheap now.

I plan on dual booting Windows 10 and Linux, probably going to stick with Elementary OS for now.  I've gotten used to it and learned a few tricks to configure the things you want, even if they are not available in the store.

By the weekend all of the components will have arrived and I should be able to begin building.  It is possible one component may not arrive until Monday, so I may have to postpone it a little.

Without further ado:

Item                             What it is
-------------------------------  -----------------
Thermaltake V21 Cube             Computer case
Corsair RM850x                   Power Supply
ASRock X399M Taichi              Socket TR4 Motherboard
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X     12 Core/24 Thread CPU
G.Skill Ripjaw V, 32GB           RAM (Memory)
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Super  Graphics Card
Intel 660P 1 TB                  M.2 SSD
Crucial MX500 2 TB               SATA SSD
Noctua NS-U14S                   CPU Cooler
Noctua 140MM Fan                 Extra Case Fan
Seagate Barracude 2 TB           Hard drive



...and that is it.  I will also carry over my other 2 hard drives since they already have all my data on them, no sense in copying when I can just pull the drives.  I will leave the current system and m.2 drives in the old PC, it will still be 100% usable.

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.

Matthew 7:6

So while reading Matthew, I came upon the "judgement" section of the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7:1-6 Christian Standard Bible (CSB)

Do Not Judge

7 “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. 2 For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. 3 Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye. 6 Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.

I understood 1-5 easily enough but was always a little confused about verse 6.  It felt as though it did not belong to previous verses, and it definitely did not belong to the following verses about seeking.  Although in a WAY it was a segue...  from Judging to Sharing.

Jesus takes this subject very seriously (well really anything he talks about He is serious about) as indicated by the "Hypocrite!" stuck in the middle.

Basically He is saying stop Judging people for the wrong reasons.  If you are judging to "show that someone has a problem" or that you are somehow better than they are... you have got it all wrong.  YOU (we all) have issues.  Maybe we don't have the same issue as someone else, but no one is clean.  "Take a better look at yourself before you try to 'help' someone else."

But notice that Jesus says NEVER JUDGE... he is cautioning us against judging from a wrong state of heart or mind.  It is something to be very cautious about... and I see it all the time, and no doubt commit the same all the time.

But then we come to verse 6.  I had to read a bunch of commentaries by venerated Christians to try and understand this one.  I came away with two concepts:  The softer of the two is "don't share the truth to people who are not ready for it"... in other words don't preach at them (at least that is what I get from that, I am probably wrong) if they are not in a place to receive it.  The other is a little stronger and that is don't share with people who are just looking for fodder or an argument to fight with you... people who already do not value the Truth (the word of God) and instead want to tear it apart at every turn.  What is the point?  It fuels them in the wrong direction (further away from God) and it bothers you.

Still, coming from a 1st person perspective, does this apply to the part about judging where you are applying scripture, or should I say throwing scripture at someone?  Or does this come from a 3rd party perspective of seeking Truth (or NOT seeking it)?  That is why I am thinking it is actually a segue from smacking people with scripture vs. seeking out Truth.  I am probably waayyyyy wrong.

Anyway, that is what I got out of it.  It pretty much applies to all social media these days.

Why do people never learn and always think they are the exception?

This in a recent news article:

Perry entered the cage -- something she does every day, Bradbury said -- when a Bengal tiger wrapped its paws around her legs, knocking her down. Another tiger jumped on top of her, and the tigers pulled on her until event attendees helped her escape.
"It's never happened before," he said. "She's gone in on hundreds of occasions."

It's never happened before...  they are large, wild predators.  Predators can be "friendly" with animals they are familiar with.  My cats at home are sweet until they feel like taking a swipe at you.  Fortunately I out-mass them by something like 25:1.   And they still leave me bleeding.

...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.

Fedora pre-Update

So, logged in this morning and saw that Fedora has a bunch of OS updates pending, including gnome/wayland and kernel updates...

This basically means that post update I won't be able to boot properly.   I don't know what it is but Fedora NEVER updates well for me.  :(  I am going to do it though and see what happens... maybe my worry is unfounded this time.