Re: a question regarding which laptop for around $1000 that I might install Ubuntu on?

On Fri, 31 Aug 2018 10:55:00 -0700
Ray Steding <[email protected]> wrote:

> Any suggestions for a $1000 laptop with a 15" screen, Core i7, 250-500
> SSD, 8-16GB of ram that I might install Ubuntu on.
> 
> Any recommendations would be helpful and appreciated.
> 
> Ray

Here's a data point that may or may not be relevant:

Three months ago, at Costco, I bought a laptop for $399.00. According
to /proc/cpuinfo it's a quad core with:

model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-8130U CPU @ 2.20GHz
cpu MHz         : 800.245 (but one out of the 4 cores is 1730 MHz)
cache size      : 4096 KB


According to /proc/meminfo, 
MemTotal:       12262632 kB
MemFree:        11799860 kB

hdparm -I /dev/sda tells me it's 5400 RPM.
Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400

Subjectively, this laptop seems sluggish to me. The only objective
measurement I can give you is it takes 10 seconds to run Chromium from
dmenu if Chromium isn't in cache, whereas on my desktop that timing is
1.5 seconds. Subjectively, my laptop doesn't have the perk and sizzle
of my many-years-old desktop. For comparison, here's the desktop's
statistics:

/proc/cpuinfo tells me my years' old desktop is a dual core with:

model name      : AMD A6-6400K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics" and 
cpu MHz         : 1813.474 (both cores in this range)
cache size      : 1024 KB

/proc/meminfo tells me:
MemTotal:       15598324 kB
MemFree:         4360568 kB

hdparm -I /dev/sda1 tells me:
Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device

On both computers, I tried to get things busy by running:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null &

And immediately after I looked at /proc/cpuinfo. What I found was on my
desktop the speed of both processors got up to 2700MHz, while on the
laptop 3 of the 4 were around 2300MHz, with the 4th being 1300MHz. 

Both have more than enough RAM. Their CPU speed, when exercised, isn't
different enough to account for this sluggishness,  although perhaps
subjectively I take the time for the laptop CPUs to increase speed as
"sluggishness".

I hypothesize the most likely differentiation between the machines is
that the desktop mounts / (and therefore /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin
and /opt) on an SSD, whereas the laptop mounts everything on a 5400 RPM
spinning disk. When my laptop's warranty runs out, I might swap in an
SSD to test that hypothesis.

One other data point: My laptop is dual-boot. A few nights ago I had to
boot Windows so my daughter could do a job interview over Skype.
Subjectively, that computer with Windows seemed to take
foooooooreeeever to do almost any task. Perhaps the Linux advantage was
the fact that I use mostly lightweight software: Openbox or LXDE
instead of Gnome, dmenu instead of those bloated launchers, I don't use
a display manager (slim, xdm, etc), and except for Chromium, LyX and
Gnumeric, most of my applications are fairly lightweight. For years
I've noted that an old, underpowered computer with my software runs
about the same as a brand-new, overprovisioned computer running the
hippest, latest bloatware.

For the most part, my response is unresponsive to your question. You
want i7 and SSD, but my laptop is i3 and 5400. You wanted to spend
$1000, but my laptop is $399. One responsive suggestion I can give you
is that if you want your $1000 high performance computer to perform
like a $1000 high performance computer, instead of installing Ubuntu,
install Lubuntu, which is Ubuntu using the lightweight LXDE wm/de.
Install dmenu and run your apps from there. Use Midori for most of your
browsing needs instead of Chromium (and never use Firefox). Do those
things and you'll almost never find yourself waiting for your computer.

HTH,
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
September 2018 featured book: Quit Joblessness: Start Your Own Business
http://www.troubleshooters.com/startbiz