Linux workstations

When the business world comes knocking companies pay attention, largely as there’s cash to be had. Because of this if you’re on the lookout for a high-end workstation you’re going to have a much better time of it. There are segments of the business world that do demand Linux-supported devices – eg NASA and the petrochemical industry – and happen to have large pots of cash. This also means those workstations aren’t cheap.

We’ve mentioned the Dell Precision range and we’ve reviewed the HP Zbook 15u G2 [see Reviews, p17, and plan to review the new Lenovo ThinkPad P70. These are heavyweight laptops and in many ways are more like mobile desktops. But if you’re interested in doing heavy number-crunching on the move, these are more than capable. We should also mention (a US builder) if you are stateside or can live without warranty support, its Serval WS and Orynx Pro, for instance, are powerful options.

The models mentioned offer Full HD or better displays, desktop-level processors – think Core i7 and Xeon models – 8GB+ of memory and dedicated graphics, such as AMD FireGL or Nvidia Quadro if you need it for visualisation plus OpenCL/CUDA GPGPU power.