News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own. Parent comment

Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by safety1st on Sunday June 08, 2025 @04:51AM (#44215673)
I'm posting right now from a 13 year old Acer laptop running Linux Mint XFCE. I always feel bad about throwing away old tech so when the time came to buy a new laptop I hooked this one up to my living room TV via HDMI, bought a $25 Logitech K400+ wireless keyboard/trackpad combo, and it's still trucking along just fine. Surfs the web, handles YouTube, Netflix with no problems, I occasionally pop open VS Code or Thunderbird to check into something work-related. Even runs a couple indie games on Steam with gamepad support.

I bet Framework laptops would take this dynamic into overdrive, sadly I live in a country that they don't ship to.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by em-bee on Sunday June 08, 2025 @07:56AM (#44216406)
same here, using the old laptops until they are physically so damaged that they can't be used anymore and the cost to repair exceeds the cost to replace them. got one in it's last breaths. working fine mostly, but the keyboard is badly damaged, so needs an external keyboard to be useful. for work of course i need something stronger, but when i need to replace my work laptop my kids get an "upgrade" :-)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by kassner on Sunday June 08, 2025 @02:44PM (#44218801)
> I bet Framework laptops would take this dynamic into overdrive

It’s in my (long-term) TODO list to build my own enclosure for a Framework motherboard, to make a portable server to carry around during long trips. Something compact that carries the punch of an i7. One day…

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by Infernal on Sunday June 08, 2025 @08:39PM (#44220444)
Similar to this? https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by kassner on Monday June 09, 2025 @05:03AM (#44222583)
Yes, but custom to my needs (disks and connections).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by agumonkey on Sunday June 08, 2025 @04:42PM (#44219362)
what are the specs ? I use a 10yo thinkpad with a core i3 and arch based desktop, sometimes the web is too heavy (discord or similar webapps) but it's mostly fine.

it's true that with a bit of education, you can get pretty far with old machines

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by safety1st on Monday June 09, 2025 @08:57AM (#44224013)
CPU: Intel i7-3630QM (8) @ 3.400GHz

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M

Memory: 7818MiB

Those specs are showing their age for sure, but I run the TV at 1366x768, so they've been enough. The CPU has been an absolute champ. I'm sure running XFCE as the window manager has a lot to do with why it trucks along, XFCE is amazingly low footprint and snappy.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Self-Host and Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your... by agumonkey on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @02:05AM (#44244633)
Thanks, I can see how an i7 with a discrete gpu could keep handling most things easily.
[ Parent | on HN ]