I wasn't sure where to post this. Please move this as is fitting.
My 10yr old laptop's (Dell, Latitude E5530, 4G ram, 2.5Ghz x 2 CPU) spin drive has died (currently running TinyCore Linux on USB in ram).
I would be running Linux, compiling the kernel, and programming in C++. I do not do computer games; Windows will be erased. Likely Debian will go on the machine, but perhaps Qubes (a monster for ram consumption) will go on there, too. I'll be using at least 2 external monitors: vga and hdmi.
I've narrowed the choices down to:
HP Pavilion Desktop PC (i5-7400/2 TB HDD/12 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM/Intel HD Graphics 630/Win 10 Home)
or
HP Pavilion Desktop PC (AMD A12-9800/2TB HDD/16GB RAM/Windows 10)
Both are same price. I've included links. I must shop at Bestbuy as I have a couple hundred dollars of gift certificates for that store.
My instinct tells me that the former is the better buy, but I could easily be overlooking something. One thing that is rather off-putting is that it seems that both desktops would not allow for an SSD to be installed (or even swapped with the spin drive). I would like someone to confirm if this is true.
Anyways, I'm not that good with these things, so any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
*** Edit ***
After a little extra searching, I'm thinking that
HP Pavilion PC (Intel Core i7-7700/ 1TB HDD/ 8GB RAM/ Intel HD Graphics 630 is the best way to go. Apparently, it allows for an SSD addon and is about 30% faster; though, I've been seeing a lot of issues concerning a meltdown with this machine. * sigh * And they only sell as refurbish. * quivers * I'm wondering how this would fair on Linux.