Re: [tlug] fanless pcs

[Benjamin Kowarsch <trijezdci@example.com>]

On 4 July 2018 at 10:11, Curt Sampson wrote:

You asked "What about vim?"; that's what I was responding to.

It seemed to me that the value you gave for VS Code was total and the one for VIM was only incremental while I expected a total. However, looking at my system, I now notice that VIM takes up only 30 MB in total, so maybe this was a misinterpretation on my part. By comparison, on my system VS Code uses 70 MB but there are a whole bunch of helper processes that take up between 20 and 160 MB which brings the total to just under 400 MB.

In any event it is clear that one probably shouldn't be using VS Code on any memory constrained box.

> > Do you use a 4K monitor?
>
> No, I don't. I guess that would be an option. Although not in my
> budget right now.

Sure. In case you weren't aware, they've come down quite a lot in
price in the last couple of years while. The one I use at home is
under ¥30k. <https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07332RH6Z/>.

Sure, but the monitor alone won't do me any good. I will also have to buy a PC at which point I'd be looking at a price tag around 60K or more. That's over my budget right now. The ThinkCentre M55 I have supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1440. I already have an old ThinkVision 19" TFT monitor for it. All it needs is a memory upgrade for about 2000 yen and I am ready to go. I also have another old 17" TFT monitor. In a second step, I could then get a second hand graphics card for about 6000 yen to hook up both monitors.

To my knowledge there is no graphics card that fits that machine and support the full resolution of a 4K monitor. And even if there was one, it would likely cost as much or more than the Liva Z with the N4200 CPU that you recommended. So, that wouldn't make any sense even if it was possible.

Therefore, I am planning to upgrade the memory on that machine, then maybe a cheap 2nd hand graphics card for dual headed operation, and later buy another PC like that Liva Z, which again I would initially use with the monitors I already have, then later again buy a nicer monitor. One step at a time.

> The R50 can take up to 32 GB, which means it would take a while
> until it becomes obsolete for lack of RAM so the expense would be
> spread out over many years.

Both options I mentioned in that list also expand to 32 GB.

I didn't mean to suggest they don't. The point is that to me it makes no difference whether a PC costs 80K or 160K. Both price tags are out of the question. For argument's sake, imagine you'd be fined for damages of 100 million USD. Would it make a difference to you if it was only 50 million instead? I guess not. Either fine would be entirely out of reach for you to pay. The point is, if I had the money to spend 80K on a PC I would also have the money to spend twice as much. And the R50 seems more appealing to me. 

 

But to necessitate going beyond 16 GB the working size of something
like Chrome + VSCode would have to more than triple, from 4 GB to
14 GB or so. I don't see what's going to drive that,

I know exactly what would drive going beyond 16GB of RAM: Operating system requirements.

The ThinkCentre M55 I have came with 1GB of RAM when I got it in 2007 and that was more than adequate to run CentOS on it. Fast forward 10 years and 1GB no longer cuts it. I can upgrade the RAM to 4GB, but in the not so distant future even that won't be sufficient anymore either. If it could be upgraded to 8 or 16 GB of RAM it would be usable for many more years.

All I am saying is that I expect it to take a while until a desktop install of Linux or BSD will require 32GB of RAM or more and thereby obsolete the R50 for lack of RAM. For ordinary use (no gaming, no video editing etc etc) this machine will become obsolete for lack of RAM, not for lack of CPU horsepower.

I wouldn't worry about expanding past 16 GB unless you have some
particularly RAM-hungry applications, such as a bunch of virtual
machines that cannot be replaced by Docker containers.

I cannot remember to ever have run into a memory limit with any application software I was using. Instead it has always been operating system requirements that obsoleted my hardware. I expect that trend to continue.