Battlestation thread

Hello, I just bought a new computer and would like to show it off a bit :blush: I am also curious about what you’re programming/gaming on, so post your computers here :slight_smile:

The laptop I bought is a refurbished librebooted RYF certified ThinkPad X200, Core 2 duo, 8 GB RAM, Intel GMA 4500MHD, 1280×800 matte display. It’s a very oldschool laptop, the kind you’d see in a 90s hacker movie or something, I am loving it. Despite the “low” specs it runs completely well, quietly, and even runs games like Xonotic at playable FPS.

My plan was to dual boot OpenBSD and some Linux distro but after a few unsuccessful attempts at correctly partitioning the disk I just settled for Devuan :slight_smile: I am now running on 100% free software and am ready to continue working on Anarch!

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This is my wife’s laptop that she shares with me :slight_smile:

i7 quad core (8 threads)
8 GB ram
It says there is an nvidia geforce card, but we don’t have the proprietary drivers so it uses the intel HD Graphcis 4600

It is a decent little machine :slight_smile: I really like using it. Though my real powerhouse is my desktop upstairs, I spend more time on this so I can be downstairs half keeping an eye on the offspringlettes :eyes:

Also, good to see you again Wizard King drummyfish :smiley:

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Nice! There is the free noveau driver you could use for NVidia, but if you don’t need it, Intel probably won’t eat up that much power. Anyway, nice to see you too :slight_smile:

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I think I tried the Noveau driver at one point and it actually was less performant than the intel one :sweat: or at least, pretty buggy. That was quite some time ago, maybe I should give it a go :thinking: but yes the intel graphics on this thing are more than good enough for Pokitto programming and some small java projects :smiley:

For multiple reasons taking pictures of my actual computer would be awkward, so here’s a picture I borrowed from the manufacturer:

(It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough.)

Specwise:

  • Windows 8.1
  • i7 4770K (3.5GHz)
  • GeForce GTX 770
  • 16GB RAM
  • ~120GB SSD
  • ~2TB HDD

Since there’s a lot of talk of open source…

I’m not running completely off open source software,
but I’m using open source software where it’s practical to do so.
E.g. GIMP, VLC, LibreOffice, Lua*, GHC, Notepad++, VSCodium, Firefox

* I actually compiled this myself

I’ve got quite a lot of other open source stuff that I don’t use as often (e.g. Blender, Inkscape).
Most of my closed source software is either stuff that’s bundled with the system (e.g. Paint, Notepad, Calculator), games-related (e.g. Steam, Minecraft) or programming-related (e.g. Visual Studio (several versions), EmBitz).

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Looks like a pretty powerful beast, I just can’t imagine what scale it is :slight_smile:

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Ok so here is my true battlestation :grin:

Ryzen 2700x
16GB ram
Gpu is a rx580

Also running Fedora Silverblue.

Since software is mentioned I’ll list my top used on all my systems:
Apache NetBeans
FemtoIDE


Steam
Gedit
Nano
Firefox
And to a much more minimal extent Epiphany.

The little black slab is my Pinebook Pro. The perfect arm64 dev companion.

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I’ve never really stress tested it (unless playing Skyrim or doing 3D rendering with Blender count),
but it ought to be.

I don’t really have a long enough tape measure to hand to give an accurate measurement of the height or depth, but I can say it’s about 23.5cm wide.

It weighs a heck of a lot though.
Not the kind of thing you’d want to be moving up and down stairs, or dropping on your foot.

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I play this a whole lot more than I should haha. The special edition version works in proton now (my brother that uses Ubuntu told me) so I’ll need to start a new game soon xD

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@Pharap you don’t have a laptop at all?

Well, I have a “proper” battle station too that I basically just use to play Xonotic (and host servers for it) and print stuff. It’s some 8 years old desktop PC, can’t remember the specs, I think it’s i2, NVidia GPU and 8 GB of RAM. It runs Debian and some proprietary SW like BIOS and drivers.

SW I am using:

  • dwm window manager
  • st terminal
  • vim as a text editor and “IDE”
  • feh for viewing images
  • waterfox as a browser
  • dmenu, tmux, VLC, GIMP, Blender, ffmpeg, LibreOffice, audacity, LMMS, …

A lot of this is suckless SW which you have to compile yourself, but it’s very easy. One advantage of using this minimal SW is that your computer performance skyrockets and you can really be using a 2000s laptop in 2020. It also gives you the true freedom to edit the source code to suit your personal needs because it’s such a simple source code (as opposed to e.g. Firefox or Blender source code).

As you know, I am proudly not using Steam or proprietary games, even though I played Skyrim back in the day and it was one of the best games for me (behind Morrowind and a few others).

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I really need to get back into Xonotic. That game is so much fun :grin:

When you log in, you have about 50% chance of finding me online.

I do, but none that are presently functioning.
Though if I had a functioning laptop I probably wouldn’t use it much anyway.


Your post reminded me I also have ffmpeg and audacity.
I use ffmpeg for converting things and extracting sound from videos, but I only use audacity very rarely, usually for extracting soundbites.
(Ffmpeg can extract parts of a sound too, but I’ve found it tends to be less precise than audacity.)

I hadn’t heard of LMMS before.

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LMMS is really cool. I’d use it more if I did not already have (the proprietary :sweat_smile:) FL Studio.

I have always had a work-supplied IBM then Lenovo laptop and always the high-end T or X Series. They have all been great and I still have a handful of the most recent ones sitting around at home (my wife has a hand-me-down, so does my son and I have a few desk warmers.)

My current one is a T480S with 32Gb Ram, an i7 and 512Gb SSD. It is approaching two years old now so I will pester work to upgrade it for me.

My own machines are Macs. I have two 27" IMacs - an older one and my newish beast.

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I have quite a few old laptops too, among which is another ThinkPad that someone gave me (I’ve posted this in another thread):

It’s a very old one, with 512 MB RAM, it’s missing some keys and has a broken HDD, but can still run an OS from a USB stick.

For some entertainment, here is my “gaming” station, please don’t mind the mess :rofl: (no product placement intended)

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Cool !, here is my station :

specs:
intel Core i5 6600K
16 Gb ram
Geforce GTX 1060 6Gb
Krait Motherboard
SSD for windows and 5 HDD for storage

And since it is in the livingroom, I can close the doors so most stuff is hidden. Not the pc itself tho :joy:

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Hey! Here is my home station:

i7 6700HQ
16 GB Ram
GTX 950m
512 GB SSD + 1TB HDD

It’s a quite heavy notebook, not really portable with a 17" screen and an exhausted battery. But it’s still quite performant even after some years.

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I lug around this behemoth as my trusted personal notepad. Its a Dell Precision M6700 with i7, 32GB RAM, some Nvidia Quadro. DVD drive, 17" display, 35 USB ports and weighs 2.5 tons. Its old but it does the business. In many tasks my current work computer (a Dell workstation) is worse.

Edit: IDK if this qualifies as a Battlestation because I play so rarely. I think the last game we played alot was Papers, please!

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I finally got that this a few weeks back and I was absolutely obsessed. I played it far more than I probably should have for days :eyes: