OK, maybe you wouldn’t pay three grand for a Project DIGITS PC. But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo?


Besides, why not use native Linux as the primary operating system on this new chip family? Linux, after all, already runs on the Grace Blackwell Superchip. Windows doesn’t. It’s that simple.

Nowadays, Linux runs well with Nvidia chips. Recent benchmarks show that open-source Linux graphic drivers work with Nvidia GPUs as well as its proprietary drivers.

Even Linus Torvalds thinks Nvidia has gotten its open-source and Linux act together. In August 2023, Torvalds said, “Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work.”

  • Chemical Wonka@discuss.tchncs.de
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    15 hours ago

    Don’t forget those who made it happen. Nvidia was “forced” to integrate Linux into its ecosystem

    Nvidia has always been hostile to the Linux community or negligent to say the least

    1000043457

    • projectmoon@lemm.ee
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      11 hours ago

      Don’t know about “always.” In recent years, like the past 10 years, definitely. But I remember a time when Nvidia was the only reasonable recommendation for a graphics card on Linux, because Radeon was so bad. This was before Wayland, and probably even before AMD bought ATI. And it was certainly long before the amdgpu drivers existed.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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        11 hours ago

        Yeah it was before AMD did graphics.

        ATI had an atrocious closed source driver. I used it … but it was not good at much of anything.

        • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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          9 hours ago

          I had ati card on my pc when pentium 4 was all the rage. I literally spent my teenage years learning english in order to get the dumb games I saved up ages for to work without crashing constantly. Its shocking how the same terrible card manufacturer is part of the company that makes the only cpu worth damn and great gpus.

    • Cris@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Man, I completely forgot about that. That’s honestly wild to think about in retrospect…

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    Honestly, I’ve found that my compute needs have been surpassed quite a while ago, and so I could easily get away with buying a $300 computer.

    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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      3 hours ago

      For real, I’m happily using an APU for 90% of the time. I barely need a dedicated GPU at all any more. I use Mint btw.

    • Snot FlickermanOP
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      14 hours ago

      Honestly, for real, a lot of low-power PCs are really useful once they have crap like Windows off of them and a lightweight Linux distro on them.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        Exactly. Get yourself a somewhat low-end PC, wipe windows, and install Linux Mint, and you’re pretty much golden.

        • Emi@ani.social
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          12 hours ago

          Did exactly this with an old laptop and use to mainly for tv and occasionally browsing when staying at our hut/cottage? Still bit slow but works.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        I’ve found my preferences have been creeping up in price again, but only because I’ve found I want an actually physically lightweight laptop, and those have been getting more available, linux-able and capable.

        I only need a few hundred dollars worth of computer, and anything more can live on a rack somewhere. I’ll pay more than that for my computer to be light enough I don’t need to think about.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      I was that way for the longest time. I was more than content with my 4 core 8 thread 4th Gen. i7 laptop. I only upgraded to an 11th Gen. i9 system because I wanted to play some games on the go.

      But after I upgraded to that system I started to do so much more, and all at once. Mostly because I actually could, and the old system would cry in pain long before then. But Mid last year I finally broke and bought a 13th Gen. i9 system to replace it and man do I flog the shit out of this computer. Just having the spare power lying around made me want to do more and more with it.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        7 hours ago

        My phone has been my primary computing device for several years now, and so I hardly ever use my laptop anyway. So it honestly doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to spend a ton of money on it.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I bought a former office HP EliteDesk 800 G2 16GB for $120 on eBay or Amazon (can’t recall) 2 years ago with the intention of it just being my server. I ended up not unhooking the monitor and leaving it on my desk since it’s plenty fast for my needs. No massive PC gaming rig but it plays Steam indie titles and even 3D modeling and slicing apps at full speed. I just haven’t needed to get anything else.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        Being blind, I don’t play video games and don’t do any kind of 3D graphics and stuff like that. So many, many computers would fit my specifications.

        Edit: My laptop right now is a Dell Latitude E5400 from like 2014 with eight gigabytes of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive with an Intel Core i5 and it works well enough. Honestly, the only problem with it is that it does not charge the battery. So as soon as it is unplugged from the wall, it just dies. And it’s not the battery itself because I’ve tried getting new batteries for it. It’s something in the charging circuitry. It works fine when it’s on wall power, but it just does not charge the battery. I figure with it being 10 years old already, at some point I will have to replace it.

        • Snot FlickermanOP
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          14 hours ago

          Oh snap I am really sorry to intrude but I have a question for someone like yourself who is an avid PC user and is also blind.

          How do you feel about the prohibitive cost of braille terminals? I am not blind but I remember seeing the film Sneakers when I was young and the blind hacker Whistler using a braille terminal. As an adult I looked into them and was shocked that some cost more than a mid-range laptop. Are they even that useful or is this a relic that I recall but has been superseded by more useful assistive technologies?

          • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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            13 hours ago

            Mind you, I don’t use Braille super often. And the Braille note taker devices are quite expensive. For sure. But just direct Braille displays have come down quite a bit in price. I remember a couple of years ago, a Braille display was launched called the Orbit Reader 20, which is a 20 cell Braille display. And I think it was like $400 or something like that. Compared to the $5,000 that some Braille note-taker devices can cost, $400 is nothing.

            • Snot FlickermanOP
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              13 hours ago

              Thanks for the feedback, that’s super interesting to me. I’m glad to hear they’ve come down in price more recently, for sure!

              • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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                7 hours ago

                Same here. It used to be that you had to get them subsidized by government programs such as vocational rehabilitation. But now they are affordable by just saving for a little bit.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        My current laptop is the Dell Latitude E5400 and it has like 4 threads with 8 gigs of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive and it works well enough even though it’s 10 years old. Honestly, the only problem with it is that it does not charge the battery. It’s something in the charging circuitry. Since it works fine when it’s on wall power, but it absolutely will not charge a battery anymore.

        • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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          7 hours ago

          I’m still dailying my Acer c720 Chromebook with Linux mint lol. I’m thankful the flimsy changing port hasn’t given out yet. But it’s coming.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    NVCC is still proprietary and full of telemetry. You cannot build CUDA without it.