Greetings buildapc!

I built my current rig during the parts drought during the pandemic or whatever, I scraped together whatever I could find and then stopped keeping up with PC parts for a few years. Looking to build a new rig, PCPartPicker attached, just looking for some double checking for any details I missed.

Use case: Linux and Linux only. It's gonna run some FreeCAD and some LibreOffice and a lot of Firefox and a lot of Satisfactory. I'm trying to build it in time for Satisfactory's launch on September 10, I've heard tell of a Ryzen 7600X3D coming imminently that I don't want to wait for.

I have a Gigabyte M34WQ monitor (1440p ultrawide 144Hz FreeSync) that I'd like to take full advantage of in Unreal engine games like Satisfactory, the upcoming Subnautica 3 and such.

My budget is $1500, I can exceed that but for every $100 over I'm going to read you a vogon poem.

This is to be my first desktop AMD GPU. My current rig (Ryzen 3600/GTX-1080) is Nvidia, it was all I could get my hands on, and the 1080 predates a lot of the whiz bang acronyms like DLSS RTX OMG LOL, I have no idea how well any of that from AMD or Nvidia works in Linux, I don't particularly care about raytracing. Word on the street is AMD is less of a pain in the head to deal with on Linux and Wayland stands a chance of running, so...

thoughts/suggestions/donations?

Update: Sub in a 7700X CPU and a 7900GRE GPU and...IT'S ALIVE:

Everything but the case arrived so I decided to go ahead and test bench it.

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I present to you The Tale Of The Cedar Planter Box.

Solid cedar, mortise and tenon joinery, with a nice bead detail on the slats. Garden hose sold separately, pine straw not included.

I use BackInTime (which is basically a front end for rsync) for backups, and I run one every night at 1 AM. This is on Linux Mint Cinnamon. If the computer is locked/the monitors have gone to sleep (computer isn't suspended), when the backup begins the monitors turn on, and will then stay on all night. I don't want to waste the power or wear out my backlights.

How can I stop it from turning the monitors on, or how can I get it to turn them back off?

I posted this one to !woodworking@lemmy.ca too, as I do most of my furniture projects, but I'm particularly proud of how this one came out. Solid white oak with genuine mortise-and-tenon joinery.

I'm working on replacing my porch furniture, and the side table was the worst of the lot so it got replaced first.

I've built a few little tables by now and I've got a lot of the process down. I used this one as an excuse to practice making actual mortise and tenon joints instead of the loose tenons I've used in the past. The mortises that the center brace sits in were chiseled by hand, the others are routed.

I'm thinking of making a couple outdoor-friendly morris chairs to replace those old iron ones. That'll be a minute though.

It's actually just friction fit together in this picture; as I type it's in the clamps as the glue dries. Tomorrow some final touch up sanding and the first of four coats of spar varnish, then a few decades on my front porch under a couple potted plants.

There's an education in all this oak; it looks conceptually simple compared to the shaker tables I've done so far, right? IT AIN'T! Each leg cambers out by 5 degrees in both directions, and that tiny difference make this project SO much more obnoxious than a table with vertical legs. Laying things out accounting for that compound miter at the top and bottom is "fun." The upper and lower frame rails are no longer the same length, they're different but related lengths. That lower panel? Can't be installed with the frame assembled. Hell I didn't even bother attaching it in any way, it's just captive in there.

Unlike the previous tables I've built that are held together with floating tenons, the rails are thin and fit entirely into mortises in the legs, which meant some chisel work squaring the corners of the mortises, so I gained quite a bit of experience with chisels here.

But, another project nearing completion.

A simple shaker style table in white oak, finished with spar urethane and kitty approved.

The breadboard ends on the panels were an education on this one; on the top they aren't strictly necessary, but I felt they were needed on the lower panel so that the movement of that captive panel wouldn't rack the legs. Found out I prefer making the tongues with a router rather than the dado set on the table saw.

This is the follow-up to my previous post about a Linux tablet for my workshop. based on the suggestion by @yojimbo@sopuli.xyz , I went with a Lenovo Duet 3i, apparently also known as an 82AT and/or 10IGL5. Sprung for the Pentium version with 8GB of RAM. It has arrived, and I've got it set up to start using.

The Hardware Itself

For a shovelware-grade machine, it's not bad at all. I'm sure they were sold in big box stores as the budget tier barely capable of running Windows 10, which is why there's so many of them for sale in barely used condition.

2 USB-C ports came in handy for charging and installing Linux from a thumb drive. The screen is surprisingly good for a machine of this price point, and it runs cooler than my cat.

The Linux Experience

SHOCKINGLY good. Linux Mint loaded right up, though I wouldn't recommend it on this machine. Cinnamon is not intended for tiny touch screens.

Fedora KDE Spin ran quite nicely, but I ended up installing Fedora Gnome. I generally hate Gnome but for a machine that will run FreeCAD, a PDF reader and a web browser, maybe a calculator, it'll work.

So far, I haven't found anything that doesn't work. It suspends and wakes from suspend, keyboard works, backlight controls work, both cameras work, auto-rotation works, keyboard works in attached and bluetooth modes, Wi-Fi works...

I think I just saw that graphical glitch @yojimbo@sopuli.xyz mentioned for the first time, I looked over at it and the top panel was near the bottom of the screen. Moving the mouse around seems to fix it, though yeah if that behavior continues or worsens I'm probably going to try either X11 or...something.

Overall I'd call it "quick but not fast." UI feels responsive, but...put it this way I watched Neofetch run. Any disk operation at all is a bit slow.

Gnome is...Gnome. I would hate to live in Gnome on my main machine. I think it'll do here; it's mostly navigable by touch screen.

FreeCAD works amazingly well and is surprisingly usable on a touch screen, though to do anything serious you do need to be able to right click and use the Ctrl key. I think it'll do what I'm after. Going to start building a shelf either today or in the next couple days, will report back how it works in service.

Let's see if I can keep this relatively short:

I'm a woodworker, I do my design work in FreeCAD and then I print out my drawings on paper to carry out to the shop with me. It would be nicer if I had a shop-proof device to run FreeCAD in the shop with me because over the past year I found myself saying the following things in the shop a lot:

• "Wait, let's go in and look at the 3D model."
• "Ah dang I forgot to note this particular dimension on the drawing, let me go fix that."
• "I'll measure this part up then go in and do some drawing."

So what does "shop proof" mean exactly?

1. Wood shop be dusty. Last year I hauled 250 gallons of sawdust to the dump. To me this means that a physical keyboard needs to be able to function if it's been packed with dust and/or needs to be vacuum cleaner proof. I also think cooling fans are probably a bad idea; a passively cooled device is probably preferable.

2. Not many outlets in the shop, so it needs a good battery life. I actually don't need a tremendous amount of performance, I've used a Raspberry Pi 3 for the kind of CAD work I do.

3. FreeCAD does not ship an APK so Android is no bueno, it's gotta be GNU/Linux.

4. It needs decent usable Wi-Fi because I envision using Syncthing to keep my woodworking projects folder synced between my desktop and this device. It doesn't necessarily need to get signal out in the shop (my phone barely does; I lose signal if I stand behind the drill press) but it does have to connect to my Wi-Fi when I carry it into the house.

I think this means I'm looking for an ARM tablet that can competently run Linux. Is there such a thing?

ADDENDUM:

Thanks to everyone who commented, I think I do have a plan of action: I'm gonna buy a used Lenovo!

To answer the question I posed, no it doesn't seem that a Linux ARM tablet is really a thing yet. Commercial offerings that run Android or Windows on ARM are often so locked down that switching OS isn't a thing, the few attempts at a purpose built ARM tablet for Linux like the PineTab just are not ready for prime time.

In the x86 world, it basically came down to 10 year old Toughbook tablets or 4 year old low-end 2-in-1s, and I think the latter won out just because of mileage and condition. A lot of the toughbooks out there will have 10 year old batteries in them, and they've been treated like a Toughbook for some or all of that time. The few Lenovo's I've looked at are barely used, probably because of how Windows "runs" on them.

I'll eventually check back in with progress on this front. Would it be better to add to this thread or create another?

I guess I got the finish to look okay on the pine legs and such. Looks great on the oak tops and shelves. Sat down to draw these on Nov 1 and they're finally next to my couch.

I've found my finishing problem: I'm building things out of pine.

Traditional stain, gel stain, urethane, tung oil, danish oil...on oak, cherry or maple many of these look fine. No matter what I put on pine, it comes out looking like a septic prolapse.