What is on Your Mind?

I just ordered a Mini-Box M350 with a Mini-ITX Intel DM510MO motherboard.

NO FAN!

I've come to hate the wine of spinning mechanisms in PCs in my quiet home. This one is for surfing the web in my living room (instead of using this laptop), so it doesn't really need much power. If I do development on it, I'll be logged into my i7 upstairs anyway. I'll use the 128GB solid state drive that I just installed in an older computer that died immediately upon being upgraded.

I haven't decided what OS to use. I used NetBSD for two or three years in this spot, followed by two or three years of PCLinuxOS. I tried to come up to speed with FreeBSD a couple times, but just never got comfortable. I've never used Vector Linux, but I've had my eye on it for some years. Maybe it's Vector's turn.

Getting my box of PC parts in the mail to put together my new PC is always exciting. I can't wait!

I got it! I installed ArchLinux, which is another distro I've had my eye on for some years because of their rolling update feature.

I actually did order a fan with it, which I wasn't planning to use, but the BIOS allows me to set it's speed and I can't hear it at 50% , so I'm leaving it powered at that speed.

That tiny, cheap Atom processor performs remarkably! I'm not compiling on it, just surfing the web, doing email and sshing to other machines, but I can't tell I don't have a much more powerful processor.