Build it yourself

I’ve always built my own PCs. Perhaps it’s the maker in me, but why pay someone else to have all the fun, when I can do as good a job myself? The sad truth is – while I’ve built other systems – my main home system has remained more or less the same Intel Sandybridge Core i5 2500K from back in 2011, and why not? With 16GB of memory it’s remained more than fast enough. A new graphics card here, an updated motherboard there and it’s stayed competitive for my needs.

Six years on and it finally looks like there’s a range of affordable upgrade options from both Intel and AMD – six cores, multiple threads, lower-power use, better hardware acceleration, faster interfaces – that make an upgrade really desirable. Ideally, DDR4 prices could be lower for a more affordable option, but that could happen over 2018…

Open source users should be as at home with their hardware, as they might be using Vi. So this issue we have our expert guide to building the best PC possible, running Linux and configured with a bulletproof filesystem.

More generally, open source activists are becoming ever more interested in opening up hardware. While we can’t talk about truly open hardware yet, killing the Intel ME is one step forward, RISC-V is progressing (see our news this issue) and at least we can control some of our hardware by knowing what goes into it and running Linux on it.

Of course, we’ve got plenty of Linux tutorials, projects, reviews and features for people happy with their hardware. We protect ourselves with the best password managers, look at the latest Chromebooks, examine the Calamares installer framework, code more Android apps, mess around with our desktops and so much more. Enjoy!