System for Photo Editing

**epeeist** · January 7th, 2017

I am thinking of upgrading my system to cope with the increased resolution of my new camera. I generally use Digikam for initial uploads and cataloguing and Darktable for the bulk of my workflow.

I have looked around and come up with this system - https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/compu...c-pc-i7-Skull/, I would increase the memory to the maximum of 32GB. I asked their support team if it would run Linux and got the clueless response that "we don't support Linux".

The questions are therefore, will it run Linux and can anyone suggest anywhere in the UK where I can get it at a comparable price but from a rather more clued up company? Alternatively, can people suggest a different system that would be suitable?

**oldfred** · January 7th, 2017

I think almost all vendor's first line help desk will say they do not support Linux.

This site has tested various NUC systems.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...&q=Intel%20NUC
Running The Intel NUC6i7KYK On Linux With Skylake Iris Pro Graphics 16.10
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...lnuc-pre&num=1

The NUC has had some driver issues in the past.

Nuc Install
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/...out-intel.html
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/...ntel-nucs.html

I had thought about the NUC, and that was why I had saved some links, but decided to just build my own.
But I wanted thin & small, so paid extra for that. I built it before 16.04 was final but knew I would need the newest drivers & system to have a chance to have it work well. I assembled it in about 3 hours & installed 16.04 without any issues, other than pretty normal UEFI settings & configuration.

oldfred's new SFF system Skylake with 16.04
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...4#post13449024

**tea for one** · January 7th, 2017

The questions are therefore, will it run Linux and can anyone suggest anywhere in the UK where I can get it at a comparable price but from a rather more clued up company? Alternatively, can people suggest a different system that would be suitable?

Here is a link to a UK supplier of Ubuntu systems:-

https://www.entroware.com/store/inde...te=common/home

Kind regards

**ajgreeny** · January 7th, 2017

You are unlikely to get a lot of help direct from most UK companies when it comes to Linux and Ubuntu support.
However, are you aware of the pcspecialist Linux forum at https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forum...y.php?32-Linux which I found very useful when I was about to purchase my desktop machine from them. I suggest you register with the forum and ask about the hardware you've chosen; you may get some very useful answers as well from those who have already done this or at least tried it.

I posted my intended hardware list to the forum, copied and printed from their configurator, and got several replies from other users suggesting minor changes in order to avoid potential bottlenecks in performance, which I made.

I purchased it just over three years ago. That machine is still my main computer and has been faultless, apart from a faulty card reader, which they replaced immediately, and even allowed me to open the case and do the replacement myself. From the start I have been running Xubuntu, my preferred OS, 12.04 at the start, followed by 14.04 and now 16.04, all LTS versions, but it also runs any of the other *ubuntu family with no problem in VirtualBox.