[TriLUG] Ideas for Replacing Home Office Workhorse Computer?

[Scott Chilcote via TriLUG]

Hello TriLUG,

First off, I'd like to thank all of those who responded on this thread. 
Lots of great suggestions and some interesting alternative options.  I
haven't made a decision yet, but my dear wife made a particularly
intriguing recommendation last week. 

We have both attended SELF (Southeast Linuxfest) a couple of times, and
we saw a presentation by System76 at the last one.  We were impressed,
and she went on to spec and order a laptop from them last year.  She's
very happy with the build quality and the optimized Linux distribution
they installed. 

She reminded me that they also build and sell customized Linux desktops
(and servers).

I apologize if this sounds like a commercial, I don't have any
involvement with them yet.  But looking at their website's system
configurator, I could easily spec and order a desktop system that would
run laps around this old Mac Pro, be just as quiet, and arguably better
looking.  It's not fair to compare directly because the Mac is 10+ years
old.  But with the System76 mid-range desktop I could move up to twelve
cores, get 32 GB of RAM and greatly improved peripheral I/O for
significantly less money. 
And the chassis is designed to be expanded a whole lot more if needed.

I'm not saying that they compete with DIY pricing, far from it.  But
their website states that they build open sourced hardware that is OSHWA
certified using open standards where possible, and GPL/Creative Commons
licensing.  They've been around for a good while, so there's hope that
they'll provide decent support.

Do any Tri-LUGgers have any direct experience with them that you
wouldn't mind sharing?  I know that I could same some $$$ by building
from parts, but for this use case I need a vendor provided system with
support.

Thanks again,

  Scott C.


On 12/17/18 5:05 PM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> My home office computer is getting long in the tooth.  It's an
> all-aluminum mac pro from 2007, has eight 2.8 GHz cores, and has been
> upgraded over the years to 24 GB of memory and SSD drives.
>
> I use this box to run vmware guests with vmware fusion, and with as many
> as four running at the same time.  It has been great for this purpose,
> being wonderfully quiet and with scant evidence of bogging down. 
>
> <snippity>


-- 
Scott Chilcote
scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
Cary, NC USA