Linux on the desktop in 2025

My long running Dell XPS laptop recently died. While trying to fix my secondary M2 drive, a series of hardware failures led to the mainboard becoming non-responsive. I was heartbroken. Up until that point, it had been a solid dependable machine. I was hoping to get many more years of use with that machine. My options were to either attempt replacing the logic board (a roughly $700 CAD cost for parts), buy a replacement laptop, or build a desktop machine. For the past several years, I’ve not really used my laptop out and about. It mostly stays docked on my desk to a large monitor and more comfortable keyboard and mouse.

Hardware choices

After pricing out a framework laptop, and a mid-range mini-ITX build, I could get way more computer for less money by going down the Mini-ITX route. While both paths would yield a machine that was easy to repair and could be incrementally upgraded With framework, you have a single primary supplier for parts, with a desktop there are more supplier choices. The desktop was also appealing as I had a ton of fun building keyboards, and this could be another electronics project. I was going to stick with Linux, and getting compatible hardware was important. Thankfully, finding compatible hardware was not difficult. Even better, it was all available locally! The specs I went with were:

- Gigabyte Aorus B560 Mini-ITX motherboard I have simple IO needs and an entry level motherboard covers what I need.
- AMD Ryzen 5 7700 I was looking for a quiet build, as I don’t want to sit beside a jet engine. This is also a component I would consider replacing in the future.
- 32 GB DDR5 ram A healthy amount of RAM is very cost effective right now, and I can expand in the future if necessary.
- 750W power supply I plan on adding a GPU in the future and wanted to have a surplus of power.
- Fractal Ridge Case This was a splurge. After having built the machine, investing in a high quality case was worth it. The ridge is well engineered and made of quality components. I found building inside the Ridge was straightforward thanks to the very thorough step by step build guide. I did manage to forget the 12V CPU power line, and incorrectly connected the power switch initially. These mistakes led to a facepalm filled evening, but I powered through.

Switching to Ubuntu

I’ve been using Pop_OS for the last few years and it has been great. This time around I chose to go with Ubuntu as Pop_OS is still based on the 22.04 release of Ubuntu and I was concerned about hardware compatibility issues with an older kernel and Mesa drivers. Installing Ubuntu was simple. The USB installer was slick and worked perfectly. There are few things I miss from Pop_OS’ tiling window manager, and I may spend some time ricing and get a tiling window manager going in the future.

While my previous mainboard died, the data on my HDD was intact. On the new machine, I was able to recover all my files from the previous drive and remote backups. via duplicity and a custom wrapper.

After I had restored, my documents, photos and music, I used my dotfiles and vimfiles repositories to rebuild my development environments and install preferred software and configuration. As usual, these scripts always need some refinement when I use them again, and this time was no different.

Overall, I was really impressed with how simple Linux on the desktop has become. I didn’t have to spend time carefully checking all my components for Linux support. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that WIFI, audio and integrated graphics all just worked. So far, I’m very happy with the machine’s hardware. However, I find the fans can get a bit too loud when it is under light load. In a few months, I plan add an AMD GPU to play some of the newer titles on my steam wishlist. I’d also like to improve the CPU cooler, and case fans. The stock fans on the Ridge are a bit too loud for my liking. I tried setting them to ‘silent’ on my BIOS, but they are not silent. I started with the stock AMD CPU cooler and while it works great, the fans are louder than I’d like. On the software side, I’m still learning the ropes with stock Gnome, and want to explore tiled window managers more. I may try a tiled window manager in the future, as I did really like that aspect of Pop_OS.