[Linux-aus] cheap laptops

[Russell Coker]

On Monday, 26 June 2023 18:03:19 AEST NeilBrown via linux-aus wrote:
> > As an aside I think that nowadays for most people desktop computers don't
> > make sense.  Unless you do serious 3d gaming a laptop can probably do
> > everything you need to do.
> 
> That's a rather ... strange comment.

It's a rather logical comment.  For evidence look at all the companies that 
have most people using laptops.  Look at the prices of desktops vs laptops for 
systems that work for most people, they are very similar before you buy a 
monitor.

> I insist on a fanless laptop, so performance isn't amazing, but is
> adequate for many things.  Doing a full compile of the Linux kernel is
> not one of them.  It takes MUCH longer on my laptop than on my desktop
> (which also has 4 times as many monitors as my laptop).

That's what servers are for.

https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/06/01/desktop-computers-sense/

In my blog post that I gave the URL for previously I wrote "For people doing 
serious programming or other compute or IO intensive tasks some variation on 
the server theme is the best option".  Compiling a kernel counts as a "serious 
programming" task.

If you use a "desktop system" to compile things and ssh to it from your laptop 
then you really have a home server with a monitor.

Even on this mailing list most people don't compile their own kernels, desktop 
environment, LibreOffice, etc.  The only strange thing about this discussion 
is the number of people with unusual use cases that seem to think that my 
comment about "most people" applies to them.

How many monitors do you need on a desktop anyway?  I've had 2*FullHD and one 
4K on a laptop and also had 2*4k without any problems.  According to the specs 
of hardware I have access to I should be able to run at least 3*4k monitors in 
addition to the build-in FullHD display.  But this is a long way from what 
most people would want to do, even on this list there's probably only a few 
percent of the people who want three monitors.  I noted in my blog post that 
support for one 4K monitor in laptops apparently became common in 2012, I 
don't know if the majority of people who have external monitors for their 
laptops have even a single 4k monitor yet, there seems to be a lot of people 
happy with FullHD and 1440p and there's a heap of new fancy curved monitors 
with resolutions less than 4k.

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