Subj : Coming back to Linux To : Accession From : hyjinx Date : Thu Sep 11 2025 09:29 pm Hey Accession, Very helpful information in here, thank you so much for taking your time to write to me! > some workloads like my dev stuff in i3 or a similar light wm. Apple > Silicon is all very nice, but until x64 is completely dead and everyone > moves to ARM, there are just some other things that don't work on ARM. > Less and less these days, but I do a lot of retro stuff, and > occasionally I want to spin up a Windows95 VM, or a Windows 11 box in > proxmox or similar. Ac> I'm just trying to understand more clearly before going further and ending Ac> way off track. Is your plan to use this new Linux machine for your work re Ac> stuff? Or are you sticking with the Mac and using this just for 'tinkering Ac> light gaming, and once in awhile doing some video editing? Reading my above decription, I realise I wasn't totally clear. The M2 Mac Mini I use as my main business machine will remain in place as the system that I will use to 'get stuff done'.. probably. Almost definitely for Video Editing. However, my business is in Cyber Security, and I often have the need to test things across multiple OS's, thus why I mentioned proxmox. I can imagine needing to have a number of Windows VMs (11? can I install win 11 that these days with the TPM crapola onto a normal VM guest?). For example, one use case will be to have a Linux host running WAZUH SIEM, with some damn vulnerable Windows vms that will get trashed. I can imagine running 3-4 VMs at any time in proxmox. Probably aren't super heavy, but we all know Winbloze is bloaty as. I may also choose to use one of those Win boxes for ...yanno. officey things, so I'd want that to be super responsive. Heck, I might even run Davinci Resolve on that and have it suck my GPU from there, if that pass-thru is possible. Then there is a Linux desktop that will be a system that will run something tile based wm. i3, hyprland. I hate the annoyance of always rebuilding my system, so Arch is probably not a go-er, so this Omarchy thing is probs not any good there. That Linux box will mainly be used for development work. Scripting, life at the terminal and browser mainly. For virtualisation, I've never used proxmox before, but the brochure looks nice, it might satisfy the virtualisation host needs I have. Re your advice on CPU, I think most people are going to say something similar to you - go with AMD, so I think I am in safe hands with your advice. On the downside, an RTX 5090 studio PC with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, 4TB storage, 64 GB RAM and an NVIDIA RTX 5090 will set me back a cool $10,350 in New Zealand (I just price checked it). That's a lot of cash. Too much cash. Ac> As for graphics cards, I don't have much experience with AMD cards as of l Ac> but there are some that seem to be performing well. I currently use an Nvi Ac> 3060 12GB that still seems to be keeping up with any heavy gaming I do (I All I remember from previous rants and raves over the years is that NVIDIA was a no-go because the drivers sucked so much balls. I did have an NVIDIA on Linux a while back and whilst it ran OK, whenever I upgraded the kernel, something broke badly and I was back to the framebuffer on tty0, running the TUI NVIDIA installer. Not much fun if you want to get work done. Admittedly this was years ago. Ac> CPU prices don't have nearly as much range in price, IMO, as graphics card Ac> So this is where you need to find out what tasks you're going to do, and m Ac> it to a GPU that can do it. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever I nee Yes, it sounds like my need in GFX is probably pretty low. I'm not a gamer. It's always nice to spin up a game or two to let off speed, I've never really had a rig capable of running games, so I've never really invested much time in gaming. The only thing I can imagine doing with graphics is rendering video. Ac> I'm not sure how these sites are in your neck of the woods, but I fully bu Ac> my last (current) PC between Amazon, Newegg, and maybe even Best Buy (US b Ac> but you can replace that with your site above). Whichever had the lower pr There is no Amazon or any of the others you mention in NZ. We are completely in the arsehole of the world. Anything coming from the USA is immediately taxed to shit, so we have to get everything parralel imported from Asia. Donald Trump (I'm not political, it is just fact), has completely destroyed USA based imports here. Ac> I guess it all depends on your budget. My entire build cost me probably ar Ac> $2k, and was about 5 (maybe more) years ago when most of the stuff was new So my spec sounds more CPU heavy than GPU. Probably nice to go for 64GB RAM and 2-4TB storage too. But spending $10,400 on the latest and greatest is never going to be an option for me! Thanks again for your help! Al hyjinx // Alistair Ross Author of 'Back to the BBS' Documentary: https://bit.ly/3tRINeL (YouTube) alsgeeklab.com --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64) * Origin: bbs.alsgeeklab.com:2323 (21:1/126) .