TLUG Mailing List

On 4 July 2018 at 17:36, Curt Sampson wrote:

> To my knowledge there is no graphics card that fits that machine and
> support the full resolution of a 4K monitor. And even if there was one, it
> would likely cost as much or more than the Liva Z with the N4200 CPU that
> you recommended.

The GT710 is a short, low-profile card that will run 4K resolution
(though only at 30 Hz) and it costs about ¥3000.

As far as I can tell, that card is PCIe 16x. The ThinkCentre M55 only has a PCI and a PCIe 1x slot. I don't think there are any PCIe 1x graphics cards so that would leave PCI but I would be surprised to find any PCI card that supports the full resolution of a 4K monitor. And if there is such a thing, it would probably be quite expensive even second hand if you could find one, likely in the ballpark of the Liva Z with the N4200.

> The ThinkCentre M55 I have came with 1GB of RAM when I got it in 2007 and
> that was more than adequate to run CentOS on it. Fast forward 10 years and
> 1GB no longer cuts it.

You have likely decided to start using a larger desktop system or are
running more applications.

No. The only thing I decided was to choose defaults when installing the OS.

A very long time ago, I spent days and days installing system software by trying to deselect stuff, then often having to do it all over again because something I deselected thinking I wouldn't need it then turned out to be a dependency for something else that I did need. I have long come to the conclusion that this was a waste of my time and I have since come to go along with whatever the OS installer suggests as a default. Call me lazy if you like. Over the years, those default setups have come to require more RAM. I hope this clarifies.

> I cannot remember to ever have run into a memory limit with any application
> software I was using. Instead it has always been operating system
> requirements that obsoleted my hardware. I expect that trend to continue.

That's Just Wrong. We've already seen here that VSCode adds 400 MB, a
more than 50% increase in memory requirements over the base OS and
lots of terminals, before you even open any files, and Chrome just ate
over 2.5 GB when I restarted it (admittedly with about 20 tabs open),
almost four times what the OS and terminals are using.

Installing VS Code doesn't obsolete the machine though even if I might have to close something else when I want to run it. Now if ALL the applications I want to use also become as memory hungry as VS Code, and any convenient alternative applications, too, then we might say that the applications have obsoleted a memory constrained machine. But, I simply look at the published memory requirements or recommendations of the OS distributor/vendor for their default install. If that number is higher than the maximum amount of RAM supported by the hardware, then I consider that hardware obsolete for use with that OS due to lack of RAM. For as long as the default install is within the hardware limit and I can use a convenient alternative to a memory hungry application, like VIM instead of VS Code, that hardware isn't obsolete yet.

BTW, the sole reason I installed VS Code was curiosity. I have been doing some development in C# with Mono and thought VS Code might support working with C# and targeting .NET in interesting ways. Otherwise I use VIM, even when writing C#.

Re: [tlug] fanless pcs