Hi all,
First off, thanks to Linus Tech Tips for all of the awesome YouTube videos. They are informative and totally awesome!
I'm a developer who has used Mac for about 15 years. I still mostly love it, but I'm not a fan of Apple's direction towards: overpricing, lack of self-serviceability (i.e. replacing / upgrading parts)...and I'll spare my vitriol about the 'touchbar'. While I'll still continue as a Mac user as a fail-safe, I want to start transitioning to Linux (Ubuntu) for my production. Plus, I'm a big fan of supporting Open Source.
I've looked into companies like System76 and ZaReason; I still may go this route for a portable option (also looking into a Lenovo laptop for this), but I feel like 1) I could probably accomplish what I want by doing things myself (for less) 2) I want to actually get my hands dirty and work on hardware for the first time. I'd like to think that I'm fairly 'tech-savvy' but as a developer my wheelhouse is very much 'code-focused' as opposed to 'hardware-focused' (for instance, why turning off/on my router works when I have internet issues is pretty much black magic to me).
What I do/require:
High-level: a lot of simultaneous 'production' processes
Speed! (macOS is generally OK with this, but when I have Adobe CC apps, virtual hosts, two browsers, etc open...things get slow even on a 16GB RAM MacBook Pro)
Design (vector/image manipulation)
Development (virtual host servers, SDKs, IDEs - LAMP, Ruby, NodeJS), I very much use my machine as a local server
QA (loads of browser testing)
Some MS Office stuff - easy enough via Wine (because I don't think any Spreadsheet app is better than Excel on Windows)
General productivity (Loads of browser tabs in multiple browsers, Slack, Git, etc)
Ubuntu (I know that there's other distros, but I like Ubuntu's UI and like to avoid terminal when I can) ...I know there can be driver compatability issues
Don't want a huge rig that looks like an Imperial Star Destroyer (clean lines, small/compact, no lights/fanfare)
Most of my storage is routed to S3 / Git repos; I do use DropBox for collaborative docs (about 100 GB), I'm not too worried about storage and figure that 500GB of SSD will more than suffice
I don't want to overheat things (I almost fried my MacBook - my keyboard and trackpad don't work now as a result of overworking it/heat issues)
I may do some video editing, but very little and nothing fancy (i.e. super basic)
I don't care about gaming (I may do this on another machine, but this is purely for work/production)
'Playing nice' with other machines (I currently have a MacBook Pro, MacMini Server, and Ubuntu Samsung laptop)
Stability / support - Because this is my first build I want to make sure that it 'works' and I don't have to fight with configuration/compatibility issues all of the time. I also want my rig to be as forward compatible as possible (I envision that this will be my workhorse for 5 years)
What I think I need (or perhaps just 'want')
64GB ram capacity (may not leap for that to start, but I want to have the option)
High processing power (I'm looking at Ryzen 7 ... I'm more concerned with power as opposed to graphics rendering)
Good internet connectivity/speed
Mini/Micro ITX board (because I want a small rig)
I came up with this: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ryanaD/saved/9TwLkL
Bonus points: fingerprint reader, which I can assume would be part of a keyboard (because I hate typing in my password all of the time)
My questions/query:
What should I look out for in terms of Ubuntu compatibility? (I am aware of Ubuntu's Hardware Support, but I get the feeling that this isn't to hot when it comes to information on bleeding edge technology)
I'd love to hear any insights from people who have done custom rigs built for Linux (this is my first time, and I 'know that I don't know')
Does my rig setup from PC Part Picker make sense? (I don't care about 'overkill' I want to have a beast machine that will last for 5 years)
What kind of n00b mistakes to I need to look out for? (I feel like when I commit to buy things, I'll then realize that I lack things like cable, etc)
Thanks in advance and looking forwards to your insights!
