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Comment by teddyc | Hacker News Reader

I resurrected a little NUC computer from a former employee. It has 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD drive. It runs Ubuntu 18.10 fine. The display port runs my 4k monitor @ 60Hz.

I bought a USB bluetooth dongle and the smallest microphone I could find on the internet so I can use my old bluetooth mouse and do audio conference calls.

I am really loving it for Docker based development b/c it feels like it runs a lot faster.

I also love the Home, End PgUp and PgDn keys. Keyboard shortcuts are tough. As is muscle memory going back and forth.

My goal is to keep my macbook in my backpack and never take it out during the workday. On most days, that's what happens.

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Keyboard shortcuts, and generally bad keyboard/mouse/trackpad options, are the only thing I miss about switching to Elementary OS. I really wish it was keyboard-equivalent to macOS.

I'm using a Microsoft all-in-one with a built-in trackpad and it's bearable but if my Apple hardware worked like this I would get it exchanged for being faulty lol.

I've been fantasizing about doing that myself. A couple of things that I could see being issues:

* We primarily use webex for conference calls internally (I believe there is a browser version for that now that would hopefully work on Linux) but I seem to also have apps installed for a half-dozen other conference apps that our partners might use.

* Printing and scanning (issues here were one of two reasons I went to Mac from Linux six years ago)

* Adobe products (InDesign in particular doesn't seem to have an acceptable alternative.)

For years I used Windows inside of a VM and/or remote desktop (the other reason I switched from Linux to Mac as the client seemed to keep getting worse with each version of Ubuntu) to handle working on Linux. Don't really want to go back to that but OSX feels like it is getting more sluggish and I miss the configurability of Linux. Still have it on a backup machine that is mostly used as a Plex Server and for playing Stardew Valley.

How do you like the NUC? I have been toying with the idea of buying a mini computer like that. I don't really want a full-size desktop tower, but I also don't really want to go the route of a laptop in a docking station.

As someone who works on an older NUC all day, do yourself a favour a get the highest end one you can afford. The J5005 CPU is an absolute piece of shit. Otherwise they're fine computers if you don't care about graphics performance.

In fact I don't care about graphics performance. Thanks for the tip. Not sure if I'll ever actually go through with buying one, but seems like a neat idea anyway.

I have a PC business on the side and I love selling people NUCs. Few or no moving parts to break, you can often mount them on the backs of monitors, performance has been good enough for ~4 years for 99% of desktop tasks. If not for the inexplicable price premium they'd be perfect for anyone except if you need a lot of storage, dedicated video, or expansion slots.

Yea, I was surprised how expensive they were. It seems like there should be cheaper options given how little laptops cost these days and them using basically laptop hardware from what I've read.

They are a fairly niche product. The only real demographic buying them in bulk from consumer outfits are small businesses without big contracts to HP / Dell, the one in a million informed tech "muggle" who knows how to install their own OS, and small IT shops that recognize how practical they are.

You can get some of them with a preinstall of Windows but because they aren't made by the big builders who stock Best Buy and Walmart shelves they don't often show up in front of consumers faces to buy, much like Linux desktops. But Dell / HP / etc have no real reason to risk their business investing in their own NUCs because theres nothing really competing with them in their spaces for that kind of hardware, and they already make the all in one computers that are about one notch too far up the "unmoddable" ladder for most of us to be content with.

Thanks for the super-informative replies. One of the nice things about HN is there is always someone that knows about some niche topic.

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