Hello Comrades,
Thanks for all your advice about setting up Linux. It was a success. The problem is that I’m now I’m intrigued and I’d like to play around a bit more.
I’m thinking of building a cheap-ish computer but I have a few questions. I’ll split them into separate posts to make things easier. Note: I won’t be installing anything that I can’t get to work on Linux.
Question about storage and swap memory.
I plan to install an SSD of maybe 128–256GB for the system files and a larger HDD for storage. I would partition the SSD so that I could install a few different distros without losing any installation. This way I can commit to some longer experiments before deciding which distro to use.
The question is: should I have the swap partition on the SSD (with the OS partition) or (separately) on the HDD?
And if I install multiple distros, do I need a different swap partition for each one? For example, if I install 16GB RAM, do I need a 16GB partition for, say, Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu? Or can I let them ‘share’ the swap partition?
Are there any additional security/privacy risks of installing more than one distro on the same SSD card?
Absolutely go with SSD. As others have said, the price premium between a tiny 128 gig ssd and even a 1 tb ssd is comparatively tiny these days so I’d recommend going with at least 500 gigs. A m.2 PCIe ssd (i.e. small and flat) is also much faster than a 2.5’ SATA (large and boxy) ssd and the price premium is negligible these days, but make sure your motherboard has an m.2 slot - most recent cpu platforms should have one.
If you live in a country where websites such as Amazon deliver, I would recommend going to PCPartpickers and sorting through the options by price/gig (here is an example of my parameters – https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&sort=ppgb&page=1).
At time of writing the best priced SSD seems to be the M450 1 tb for 25 USD, which is a ridiculous sale that I would personally jump on. (it is an m.2 so see above note).
Hard drives are only really good for cheap mass storage (e.g. if you have literal mountains of photoshop projects) and servers these days (e.g. those 6 or 14 tb disks from seagate), or if you’re building a computer out of literal trash with scavenged hard drives in which case i would refrain from saving anything important on them.
Handy website! $65 for 2tb m.2 SSD – prices have got a lot cheaper since the last time I built a PC. Are there any brands that you would advise to avoid?
As for the m.2 slot, would you advise that I start with the best motherboard within my budget and build up from there?
I don’t have mountains of data. Mostly I work with texts. I’ve made do with 128GB (plus a USB as a backup) for about five years now. It’s been a pain at times but I think 150GB would do me. Considering the price nowadays, I’ll likely go for a TB, maybe split on separate drives, using one as an internal data back up. Any reason why that’s a terrible idea? I’ve heard that HDD might last longer, so might be a better option than an SSD for an internal backup. Would you agree?
Even though there are lots of vendors, most SSD components are sourced from just a few companies: the NAND is from SK Hynix/Micron etc., and the controller is from Silicon Motion/Phison etc. Some of the larger vendors (Intel, Samsung, Crucial, Hynix, WD) produce their components in-house and are also more reputable, but the actual differences most of the time are minuscule. I would recommend purchasing from one of those vendors, but at lower price points (e.g. Intel’s 670p or Crucial’s P3) they often use cheaper QLC NAND which throttle the sustained write speeds when copying lots of files, and also have lower endurance. Laptop users generally don’t have a problem with these if all they need is snappy-enough everyday use, but professional users (e.g. copying tons of photos) might lose time or reliability depending on their use case. If I’m penny-clinching, I would recommend picking out the cheapest drives with the characteristics you desire (e.g. pcie generation and capacity), then doing your research as to componentry. If I wasn’t trying to save every last penny right now, I would probably get the Crucial P5 Plus 1TB because it’s from a reputable brand and a noticeable improvement over cheaper drives ($49). At higher capacities, I’d be more inclined to simply get the best of the best considering how cheap the (gen 4) prices are right now, or at least close to it such as with the samsung 980 pro 2TB.
For motherboards, having an m.2 slot is probably not an issue if you’re buying new. my advice would be to pick a chipset that supports the cpu you want (e.g. z790/b760 for intel’s latest, x670/b650 for am5), then sort by price while looking for the other qualities you might want first (e.g. overclocking, xmp, onboard wifi, networking, decent onboard audio). speaking of motherboards, what cpu do you think you’ll get?
I’m not qualified to speak on redundancy or backups.