In the eventuality that I want to run Linux Mint on a desktop, what I'd be looking for would be a box similar to my Mac Mini (about 8" square, 1.5" high), with internal power supply, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 3GHz or so (mine's an i5), 10/100 ethernet, HDMI, 2 x USB-3, 4 x USB-C. I'd want to be able to run two screens using HDMI and one of the USB-C ports.
Any suggestions? I had a quick look but what I saw were cheapies that had small ram or small ssd, or VGA (FFS!) instead of HDMI.
Its a tad larger, but I got myself a stunning desktop for a couple of hundred Its a refurbed HP EliteDesk
Here is one without a DVD
Or full size with DVD and 16GB..
HPs used display port, not HDMI, which is arguably better than HDMI - my monitor had a display port socket in it already.
I've bought tow machines from these people and service is excellent. They will mix and match and add extra RAM if you want.
If really want a small footprint machine you are stepping off the normal PC path.
The best replacement for a Mac Mini is - a Mac mini!
But you will pay through the nose for that form factor
In the end its your money, but best value is from the small ITX sized machines as in the links provided, You will get a very class machine under £300. Expect to pay double for a Mac Mini sized machine.
There are tutorials on how to install Linux Mint on one.
I am recommending refurbed machines because I am finding that a ~6 year old business machine is as good or better as a new machine at a similar price, as pace of development of CPUs seems to have slowed. This quad core i5 is fast enough for everything except video editing. And the graphics on board are faster than a special card in my old machine was...
If you want particularly small then there are the Intel NUC class machines - these are typically about 4.5" square and 2" tall.
Usually bought as a "bare bones" box where you add your own RAM and SSD, or sometimes RAM, SSD, and CPU.
Intel, Asus, and Asrock do quite a few.
Mini STX is the next common size up (about 6" x 6" x 2")
Prices start at about £150 for new machines... (Although supply is tight at the moment). Remember you will need to add stuff to make a working machine!
Or look at recon ex business machines like:
What about something like
I looked at NUCS when they first came out, and right there are the issues
- not many USB ports
- external wall wart
- no DVD drive
- pretty much unexpandable if you do want more video et
OTOH if they fit the need and you dont mind the wall wart, that is a pretty good price.
Although I can get i5 for less..second hand..
Its really a question of whether aqNUC will be enough. I guess if a mac Mini is OK, a NUC is OK, wallwart and all..
I haven't checked, but do any of those NUC have an internal power supply? Even if it could be squeezed in, wouldn't it be likely to lead to overheating? Why should it matter if there's a wallwart rather than an internal PS?
I thought internal DVDs were dying out these days, and very few new machines had them.
Not that I have ever seen.
Even if it could be squeezed in, wouldn't it be likely to lead
I hate them - the little coaxial sockets are a source of weakness. It's more boxes ..
Well yes, that is perfectly true, BUT they are still important to me for what I do.
You CAN get a USB one, but its another USB slot and another box...
'i5' doesn't mean a great deal - the older ones are a fraction of the speed/efficiency of a newish i3.
The M1 Minis are supposed to be astonishingly quick for the money - if they do what you want.
Lots of ex-corporate mini PCs available for not-much used.
They aren't Macs, so it's 5 minutes / one screw to pop the lid and upgrade the RAM and HDD/SSD. No spudgers or glue needed!
Do you actually need 4x USB-C? They typically have more USB-A, although you can use adapters if your devices have type C ports. While they should be able to do video out of a USB-C port, they're corporate boxes so typically have 3x Displayport as well (no need to faff about with USB-C when they're nailed to the desk in a bank or wherever).
If you want an internal PSU there's no space in the 'tiny' chassis, but the next size up in the same ranges is the 'small form factor' (SFF) which has an internal PSU.
Theo
Well come to that I'd just reuse the Mini that I have! But in general (apart from the one I have), I've tended to buy they off eBay, such as:
The 2018 Mini I have has all the ports I want (couple of spares) and an internal power supply. It also doesn't have VGA or a DVD drive, neither of which I want - I've got a cheap Amazon USB DVD drive for those odd times when I need it. The only trouble is that Apple expects you to run macOS on it and it looks like it's difficult to run Linux instead (I tried that once with mixed results). I can run Win/Lin in VMs, of course, but even there I have to disable SIP otherwise the VMs won't start.
(SIP is an extra level of hardware protection to prevent malware).
Normally, again, macOS is what I want to run but if they get too fussy with locking things down then I may feel like jumping ship.
Well, thanks for all that.
It might be worthwhile making up a live DVD/USB stick linux boot and seeing how well it works.
Many many people install Linux on old Macs and they work really well on it.
Whether Apple has made this harder to do lately in newer kit I don't know.
Her are simple instruction on how to set up a dual boot setup - problem is that you need to boot with option key held down to select linux instead of MACOS.
pretty decent instructions here...
Once booted the Mac is 'just PC style hardware' and there should be no issues at all.
Some of the more obscure MAC hardware might not work. But even firewire is supported these days.
Here is a debian guide to getting the firmware correctly updated and configured to boot Linux natively.
I have got MacOS big sur running here in VirtualBox, it takes a bit of hacking about to get it working since Apple try to make it not happen :-) However it is a route to using what you like on a non Cupertino box.
Something like:
(I can get those for about £169 inc VAT at the mo)
You can kit that out with any AM4 socket CPU up to 65W:
I've used an older Intel version of those (Asrock Deskmini) and it's quite a nice chassis - it allows CPUs with a decent power envelope, rather than the laptop CPUs that are often used in NUCs.
One thing to bear in mind though is that, while most Intel desktop CPUs have integrated graphics, a lot of AMD CPUs don't. So it has to be an AM4 with integrated graphics, because there's no room to fit a discrete GPU in that chassis. That's why it's only the 'G' suffix parts listed.
Theo
minted
From a UI PoV, Big Sur is what happens when you have too many people with time on their hands. There was nothing (much) wrong with how Mojave looked.
Those actually look like a possibility. Too bad about the PSU, though.
Indeed... that 65W limit gives access to some fairly decent CPUs like:
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G CPU with Wraith Stealth Cooler, AM4, 3.9GHz (4.4 Turbo), 6-Core, 65W, 19MB Cache, 7nm, 5th Gen, Radeon Graphics
or
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Wraith Stealth Cooler, AM4, 3.8GHz (4.6 Turbo),
8-Core, 65W, 20MB Cache, 7nm, 5th Gen, Radeon Graphics(both of which will cost more than the chassis!)
I think in your position I'd either stuff Linux on a mac Mini, or go up a size to 'small ITX board' standard PC for the flexibility and expandability
My current EliteDesk plus a pair of speakers is still smaller than the
24" monitor, width wise.Apple make pretty good hardware. Its their attitude I dont like. and if as you imply they have gone full-on 'chrome and tailfins' on Big Sur, then jumping ship would seem to be a good idea.
Apple is an expensive walled garden that doesn't play nice with the rest of the world.
That's OK if what they have satisfies the need, and you can bear replacing hardware every 5 years when they stop supporting it...
TBH, I only needed *any* moderately recent release to harvest the root certificates from, I was not planning on using it much.
You probably won't find internal PSUs until you get up to to mini ITX form factor boxes.
So if it's £170 for the box, what does that add up to once you've added a CPU,
16GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, and by the looks of it a card for WiFi?
Like I said, I had difficulty with that.
They're making it like iOS. This is daft because a desktop is nothing like a phone. But we'll see. I think it's more likely to be the hoops to go through to have one's app allowed to be installed which will be the eventual pain. At the mo I have to code-sign and then notarise the app before folks can download it off my website and run it. Luckily someone was interested enough (for his own purposes) to write an app to automate these steps. Otherwise it's all CLI things to do with error messages that may as well be in Chinese.
I think you're overstating this. I can plug any Linux or Windows formatted disk into a Mac and read it without issue. I'm also waiting to see if John can give an idea of the cost of a Jupiter A320 once you've added a CPU, memory, an SSD, and a WiFi card. I bet it won't be far short of the £699 I spent on an ARM Mini I got before Christmas for SWMBO, to replace the 12 year old Mini she'd been using for the last 4 years.
We used to see T r o l l go on Mac newsgroups and say how expensive Macs were. Then comparisons were made of some machine he was touting against some equivalent Mac, and once you'd upgraded his offering to actually be comparable to the Mac in question, you'd find the costs were much more comparable. I tended to stay out of these exchanges.
Where Apple tends to get unwarranted money is when you want more than just the base model. They charge a lot for the extra 8GB to get to 16GB, or to go to
512GB SSD instead of 256. So for many years I just bought the base model of eBay and got it upgraded elsewhere.Just because they stop updating the OS, doesn't mean you have to stop using it.
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