21st February 2017, 6:08
Thanks Rocky for the well-detailed explanatory expansion. Just for preamble, pls note/remember that IMO i'm still only barely-capable with Linux, albeit now being a few years since i fully emerged from the Windows darkness i do know more now than then [not hard]. As such, my massive confusion when i read your earlier posts above was largely due to my absence of sufficient historical & overall Linux background knowledge to give me any context in which to understand your info. Thank you for bearing with me as i try to keep learning.
Just to clarify the "newness / oldness" issue re your "you can decide whether to not do anything (which in your case, since you have a considerably old hardware, is absolutely OK) or to hop on the HWE train" ... My Tower [primary pc] is no longer brand new, certainly, but as a mid-2015 vintage surely is not truly "considerably old hardware"? I freely acknowledge it is not [& never was] possessed of cutting-edge specs, but i'd have hoped it was more than decent-enough to be still a good Linux box:
Conversely my Lappy [Dell XPS-15 of Jan-2011] is undeniably "considerably old hardware" [but note, this is an OLD copy from last year, thus its OS, kernel & NVidia-driver info are obsolete]:
As such, having re-read all your info, my current inclination is to probably ignore HWE for Lappy [my assumption being that its old-age presumably means no benefit from HWE ???], but probably proceed with HWE for Tower. However, to help me decide for Tower:
1. I hitherto deliberately avoided all distros for my Tower's OS that were Rolling Releases like say Manjaro, as i didn't want to suffer days when the latest overnight update broke my pc [maybe that doesn't happen anymore, but when i was reading fora a few years ago that seemed to be a thing]. Would my Tower becoming "Maui HWE" materially threaten my Tower's availability [as distinct from reliability]?
2. As you know, my Tower now has kernel 4.9.9. Would i incur any material risk to stability / function by installing Ubuntu 16.04.2 HWE, given its 4.8.x basis ?
Given the regional time difference before which i might reasonably hope to see your reply, & because i am curious, i might fire up one of my Maui VMs soon after posting, & deploy the HWE onto it, then observe what happens. Thanks again.
Just to clarify the "newness / oldness" issue re your "you can decide whether to not do anything (which in your case, since you have a considerably old hardware, is absolutely OK) or to hop on the HWE train" ... My Tower [primary pc] is no longer brand new, certainly, but as a mid-2015 vintage surely is not truly "considerably old hardware"? I freely acknowledge it is not [& never was] possessed of cutting-edge specs, but i'd have hoped it was more than decent-enough to be still a good Linux box:
Code:
Z97-HD3:/$ inxi -Fxz
System: Host: Z97-HD3 Kernel: 4.9.9-040909-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 6.2.0)
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.4 (Qt 5.7.0) Distro: Ubuntu 2.1 xenial
Machine: Mobo: Gigabyte model: Z97-HD3 v: x.x Bios: American Megatrends v: F7 date: 12/08/2014
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-4790 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 28800
clock speeds: max: 4000 MHz 1: 3999 MHz 2: 3956 MHz 3: 3928 MHz 4: 3855 MHz 5: 3990 MHz 6: 3973 MHz
7: 3936 MHz 8: 3876 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GF119 [GeForce GT 610] bus-ID: 01:00.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: intel
Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NVD9 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card-1 Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:03.0
Card-2 Intel 9 Series Family HD Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Card-3 NVIDIA GF119 HDMI Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 01:00.1
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.9.9-040909-generic
Network: Card: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: d000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 2250.5GB (39.6% used) ID-1: /dev/sda model: Samsung_SSD_850 size: 250.1GB
ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST2000DM001 size: 2000.4GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 35G used: 21G (64%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
ID-2: swap-1 size: 42.95GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-0
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8C mobo: 27.8C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 415 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 10803.1/31591.2MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.461) inxi: 2.2.35Conversely my Lappy [Dell XPS-15 of Jan-2011] is undeniably "considerably old hardware" [but note, this is an OLD copy from last year, thus its OS, kernel & NVidia-driver info are obsolete]:
Code:
XPS-L501X ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System: Host: XPS-L501X Kernel: 4.4.0-45-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.28) Distro: Linux Mint 18 Sarah
Machine: System: Dell (portable) product: XPS L501X v: A08
Mobo: Dell model: 00CKNG v: A08 Bios: Dell v: A08 date: 07/26/2011
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i5 M 460 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10108
clock speeds: max: 2534 MHz 1: 1333 MHz 2: 1999 MHz 3: 1466 MHz 4: 1333 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GF108M [GeForce GT 420M] bus-ID: 02:00.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.3 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1366x768@60.01hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 420M/PCIe/SSE2
GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 367.57 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-45-generic
Network: Card-1: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 04:00.0
IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 09:00.0
IF: enp9s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 256.1GB (73.6% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: SAMSUNG_SSD_PM81 size: 256.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 30G used: 7.9G (29%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-2: /home size: 182G used: 157G (91%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
ID-3: swap-1 size: 10.74GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-0
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 62.0C mobo: 0.0C gpu: 0.0:63C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 257 Uptime: 17 min Memory: 1449.3/7718.3MB
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.421) inxi: 2.2.35As such, having re-read all your info, my current inclination is to probably ignore HWE for Lappy [my assumption being that its old-age presumably means no benefit from HWE ???], but probably proceed with HWE for Tower. However, to help me decide for Tower:
1. I hitherto deliberately avoided all distros for my Tower's OS that were Rolling Releases like say Manjaro, as i didn't want to suffer days when the latest overnight update broke my pc [maybe that doesn't happen anymore, but when i was reading fora a few years ago that seemed to be a thing]. Would my Tower becoming "Maui HWE" materially threaten my Tower's availability [as distinct from reliability]?
2. As you know, my Tower now has kernel 4.9.9. Would i incur any material risk to stability / function by installing Ubuntu 16.04.2 HWE, given its 4.8.x basis ?
Given the regional time difference before which i might reasonably hope to see your reply, & because i am curious, i might fire up one of my Maui VMs soon after posting, & deploy the HWE onto it, then observe what happens. Thanks again.