Questions about setting up a new computer

[John J. Boyer]

Thanks for the information provided by you guys on this list. 

The advantages of a SSD are minimal for me. I'll prbably just get a 1 TB 
hard drive. Other specs are a desktop tower, 8 GB Ram, ethernet gigabit 
poer, VGA port, USB ports and Bluetooth.

John

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 08:47:38PM -0400, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, John:
> 
> You've already gotten excellent advice on list about modern Linux
> installations, so I'm not going to repeat all that. Suffice it to say
> that what you're trying to achieve is pretty much the default install
> these days, i.e. the tmpfs in ram, etc., etc.
> 
> My question to you is what kind of machine? Are we talking about an
> office tower here? Or is this going to be a laptop?
> 
> If the former--then there's lots to talk about. But, if it's a laptop, I
> strongly suggest you consider getting it from an outfit like Emperor
> Linux:
> 
> http://www.emperorlinux.com/
> 
> You'll pay a bit more for the machine than you would pay for the same
> model elsewhere, but it will have Linux installed to your
> specifications, and you'll have their support as you learn to use your
> new machine. That's worth the price difference, imo.
> 
> PS: Go ahead and have them install everything you need to run the
> graphical desktop with Orca's braille support, but tell them you want
> the console to be your default boot environment. That's a very simple
> systemctl command these days, and leaves you with all the flexibility
> you can ever want, i.e. you can start the gui with a startx command
> whenever you do want to run Firefox, or something else on the desktop.
> 
> Janina
> 
> John J. Boyer writes:
> > I've more or less decided to replacer my ten-year-old Linux machine. It 
> > is giving error messages intermittently. Most of them are about sector 
> > errors, but others seem to have nothing to do with the hard drive. It 
> > may be more and more troublesome, even if the hard drive is replaced. 
> > Besides, it would be nice to get more up-to-date hardware.
> > 
> > I'm thinking of getting 32 GB of ram. 8 GB will be for normal use. The 
> > other 24 GB will be in a ramdisk. Do I need a paging file? 8 GB of 
> > available ram should be more than enough. The paging file on my present 
> > machine always shows 0 usage, even with only 4 GB of ram. How do I avoid 
> > setting up a paging file during installation? I'm using Debian Jessie.
> > 
> > How do i set up the ramdisk? I want to assign the temp directory to it. 
> > It might be nice if the bin, sbin and usr directories were loaded onto 
> > it at boot-up.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > John
> > 
> > -- 
> > John J. Boyer; President,
> > AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
> > Email: john.boyer at abilitiessoft.org
> > Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> > Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> > Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
> > Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with 
> >          disabilities which are available at no cost.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Blinux-list mailing list
> > Blinux-list at redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
> 
> -- 
> 
> Janina Sajka,	Phone:	+1.443.300.2200
> 			sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net
> 		Email:	janina at rednote.net
> 
> Linux Foundation Fellow
> Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup:	http://a11y.org
> 
> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> Chair, Accessible Platform Architectures	http://www.w3.org/wai/apa
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list

-- 
John J. Boyer; President,
AbilitiesSoft, Inc.
Email: john.boyer at abilitiessoft.org
Website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
Status: 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
Location: Madison, Wisconsin USA
Mission: To develop softwares and provide STEM services for people with 
         disabilities which are available at no cost.