build-time.md.bak (4596B)
1 # Build time! 2 3 After thinking about it for quite some time, my girlfriend and I finally 4 got a nice desktop PC. This is our first build, and the first time I 5 open up a desktop PC in 10 years or so! 6 7  8 9 ## Specs 10 11 * CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700 (8 cores / 16 threads, 3.8GHz base / 5.3GHz Boost) 12 * GPU: Asus AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8GB dedicated memory) 13 * RAM: 2x32GB 14 * SSD: 2TB NVMe 15 16 We (especially my girlfriend) play some games, but not the newest AAA 17 titles, and we are definitely willing to sacrifice some graphics quality. 18 So we went for some "best bang for the buck" CPU and GPU, paying attention 19 to the power usage, too. 20 21 I also write code for fun, and for one of my hobby projects I would like 22 to experiment with different sizes of RAM, so I wanted at least 32GB. We 23 ended up getting 64 because we had some money left in our budget and we 24 did not need (or want) a better (and more power-hungry) CPU or GPU. 25 26 With the case and all the peripherals, including a pretty good 27" 27 screen, we got it for less than 1400€, which I think is a good price. 28 29 ## Building it up 30 31 We were a bit scared of putting all the pieces together. My girlfriend 32 has never done it, and the last time I assembled a 33 PC it was back in the days of spinning hard drives with 34 [IDE connectors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA) 35 and motherboard 36 [beep codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test#Progress_and_error_reporting). 37 You know, when the PC kindly told you in pseudo-morse code exactly what 38 was wrong. Those were the days! 39 40 Nostalgia aside, the build process went pretty smoothly - except for 41 a small cut on my middle finger. Here are some of the things I found 42 interesting: 43 44 ### Black is the new green 45 46 I remember mother boards and graphics card used to be all green, now not 47 anymore! At least in our case, they are all black. Cool, I guess. 48 49 ### Tiny NVMe drive 50 51 Modern NVMe drives are really small! I remember old hard disks being 52 literal bricks - you would not want to drop one of those, lest it breaks 53 your toes or damages the floor. Now you would not want to drop one for 54 fear of loosing it under the sofa. 55 56 ### Fans everywhere 57 58 The case has a fan, the CPU has a fan, the GPU has two. I don't remember 59 there were this many fans in ~2009, but if it keeps my chips cool, 60 I'll take it! 61 62 ### Damned RGB 63 64 We (espcially me) do not like at all the modern "gamer aesthetics" that 65 demand RGB lights everywhere. So we carefully chose components that had 66 the no LEDs, or as little as possible. Unfortunately, the stock CPU fan 67 has more lights than a Christmas tree. Our solid black case saves us here. 68 69 ### Ugly BIOS 70 71 I mean, WTF is this screen? 72 73  74 75 It's like a B-tier early 2000s video game. I think the classic 80s 76 style, curses-like graphics looked much better. But on the other hand, 77 who cares. 78 79 ## Operating system 80 81 We agreed on using Linux, because we are both Linux users, because all 82 the games we would like to play work either natively or via proton, 83 and because fuck you Microsoft and your crappy spyware. 84 85 I use [Void](https://voidlinux.org/), but for a shared PC I would like 86 something that "just works" with minimal setup. My girlfriend uses 87 [Mint](https://linuxmint.com/), but she wanted to try out something 88 new. Debian seemed like a solid choice, and it is 89 [very similar to Linux](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ocXFgowZA) 90 (in case you can't click on the link or don't understand Italian, it's a joke). 91 92 For the desktop environment we initially went for XFCE, but my 93 girlfriend immediately disliked it because many administration tasks 94 were counter-intuitive or just impossible (e.g. adding a new user). So 95 we switched to KDE, and we are both reasonably satisfied with it. However, 96 I am a bit disappointed to see that it is (still) a bit buggy - some of the 97 first disappointments include: [Discover](https://apps.kde.org/discover/) 98 failing to open, KDE "administrator" users not being able to use `sudo`, 99 the [screen failing to turn off](https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f37-kde-5-27-screen-doesnt-dim-nor-turn-off/73960) 100 after the set timeout. At least it is not as buggy as the inital KDE4 101 release in 2008. 102 103 ## Build time? 104 105 So, how long does it take to build Linux on my new Linux build? 106 107 ``` 108 $ sudo apt build-dep linux 109 $ wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.5.7.tar.xz 110 $ tar -xvf linux-6.5.7.tar.xz 111 $ cd linux-6.5.7.tar.xz 112 $ make mrproper 113 $ make defconfig 114 $ time make -j16 115 116 real 1m27.215 117 user 17m57.806s 118 sys 1m46.663s 119 ```