[sclug] Cheap'n'nasty Tesco Linux machines

[Alex Butcher]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2008, Phillip Chandler wrote:

> Just been to their web site
> ( http://direct.tesco.com/q/N.1999034/No.10/Nr.99.aspx ) and it actually
> looks quite good considering its only ?139.93. And theres plenty of room
> for adding extra cd/dvd and hdd. So you could quite easily add a
> secondary hard disc, but how would you set the 2nd hdd as the /home
> partitions ?

Install the disc, partition it, format it, mount the new /home partition at
a temporary mountpoint, copy the current data from /home to the temporary
mount point, then unmount, adjust /etc/fstab and remount it as /home.

> But seeing as its only supplied with Ubuntu 6.06 Id be inclined to do a
> fresh install of 7.04.

Your call, but the version they've supplied is the Long Term Support
version, which is probably more appropriate for less technical users who
won't want to upgrade their distro install every six months or so.

> I was a bit miffed with the 2nd machine being ?50 more for a 1.9ghz
> speed and 512mb ram where as the ?139.93 is 2.66ghz speed and only 256mb
> ram ? Is this a typo on their part ?

The 2.66GHz machine is a Celeron D 331, the 1.9GHz machine is a dual-core
Athlon with a faster front-side bus, more cache and 64 bit extensions. The
clock speeds of any two different architectures are not directly comparable,
rather like comparing car engine designs (e.g. Mazda's 1.3l Wankel rotary
engine develops 238 horsepower, compared with ~100hp from the 1.4l Rover K
series).

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher, Bristol UK.                           PGP/GnuPG ID:0x5010dbff

"[T]he whole point about the reason why I think it is important we go for
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