Hardware recommendation for a stable system with Fedora

Ask Fedora
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1

This post may sound ridicolous, but I need to ask given my situation.

I need to trash my current hardware due to an annoying issue that it’s a bit difficult to troubleshoot…
The system hangs after a while (6/24/48-72h…) and I have no time for this, gotta be productive asap.
The kernel seems to have dumped something the last time, but I couldn’t get the location, again, time loss in checking how it is configured by default.
The default application for crash monitoring doesn’t show any of these crashes.

So, here’s the list of options:

  1. Use Fedora in Parallels on MacOS (pay the license dude), I have 32GB of RAM, they should be enough until I don’t decide to buy a proper workstation for more demanding projects in programming, RAM is the only limiter here… Though RAM compression has an interesting rate on my MacBook Pro M2 and the swap is always used by useless cashed memory portion, so no much writing on the M2.

  2. Buy a workstation, which I think I’ll buy it anyway later.
    I was thinking to the Dell Precision T5820 with the following hardware specs:

  • Xeon w-2145 8c/16t (6y old)
  • 128GB RAM ECC
  • 2TB M2 or 4TB if big bucks will come for Christmas
  • Video card? Any that doesn’t soffer driver issues? 20-30 pounds budget on that…

The total expense would be 700 pounds + the M2 and a time machine disk (linux version :smile:), so around 1000 pounds max.
The main hardware is already 6y old, I’m not sure if this the right choice but it’s definitely the cheapest solution out there as used hardware.

Do you know any better choice?

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I don’t have personal recommendations, but RHEL certified workstations should be a safe bet.

3

Thanks, I was thinking making this kind of search online, I saw that the Precision 5860 Tower is compatible, the hardware should be very similar, but the architecture is different, for example, DDR4 vs DDR5 just to start with.

I’m confident that it can work, but you may never know…
Unfortunately, this is the only “Precision” model fully tested by Red Hat, and it’s also incredibly expensive.

4

Have you run memory tests? There is a recent memtest86+ that supports UEFI boot.

As for buying a workstation – if you don’t need to run Windows 11, business have been trading in workstations 3-4 years old, so you can find name-brand “reconditioned” systems at a discount from the OEM or large sellers that serve the business market. These have been around long enough for linux issues to be addressed, but use Linux Hardware.org to see what works for linux. Plan to spend a bit for ad-on USB wifi and sound devices as you won’t get much choice of what comes in the box.

1 Like
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Thank you, I didn’t think running that diagnostics, but I will.

Yes, the plan is to use older or refurbished hardware, I will look into that website, thanks.

Wifi is not a problem, cable user here :smiley: .
Sound device? Earplugs will work fine :slight_smile: .