Alright, I would just double double check because it could mean that it supports AMD graphics cards. This is what I find when I look up your MOBO

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16813157507

Its chipset is Intel Z97

My mistake - I just double checked with my friend who provided the MOBO - he was just using a spare MOBO box - the actual model is the MSI 970A-G46 which is strictly AMD FX.

Sorry for my oversight! I appreciate you taking the time to make sure I'm set.

Yo Pete! Why you singling me out? I'm not even contributing to this set of posts. Also, I know what all those acronyms are: I'm not computer illiterate. I ain't no Freebase Dali, but I know what it is and where it goes. :(

Hey, everyone. I did end up picking up a certified refurb SSD and spent 7 hours attempting to install Ubuntu and mirroring my OS config to the drive. I quickly learned that my custom config doesn't lend itself to cloning applications, so after trying several backup utilities I gave up and wrote a process guide to rebuild the entire system from scratch.

I then tried flashing the live USB with several distros none of which installed without errors, zeroed out the SSD and started from scratch repeatedly, but each attempt was worse than the prior. Every install reports numerous system errors when I boot to it, all application installs fail, and after the latest fresh install, the system freezes at the password prompt.

I ran disk tests and it says it's OK. Any ideas why the SSD is giving me so much trouble simply installing Ubuntu?

looking for opinions from those more knowledgable than i

my macbook will be 6 years old this winter and i'm thinking i'm way over due for a new computer. i'm done with Apple as I've had a fair share of issues with this computer and for the price tag it really doesn't wow me. because i'm a university student it will kind of need to be an all-purpose computer, but i would primarily like it to be able to run games and stream (not necessarily at the same time, the streaming would more than likely games from my xbox.) because i can still get a little money for my mac, i'm not overly worried about paying a little bit extra to get higher quality. in saying that, i am still a student so i would like to keep it under $1500 for sure.

tl;dr i'm looking at this laptop, from my knowledge it seems like it would meet all my needs. i7 processor would be really nice and i see it's on amazon for $1,349. having an hdd isn't ideal, but i'm sure i can swap it for an ssd later on if it really affects performance. so if someone can confirm that i'm not wasting over a grand by buying that i would appreciate it, or if anyone has a better alternative in the same price range or cheaper point me in that direction.

That is one hell of a laptop! I've never used computers for gaming [besides solitaire], so I can't help you out much, but Windows 10 does have good integration with your XBOX, which you mentioned would be a selling point for you. I hear that Alienware laptops are great for gaming. You might check them out.

yeah, Microsoft seems to be pushing really hard towards merging Xbox and Windows software, the line between video game consoles and PCs are getting narrower and narrower by the year.

the high end Alienware builds look nice but there's nothing in the price range of the ASUS with the same specs. i'm pretty sure there are a few IT guys on here so i just wanted to ask the question in case there was a make or break quality I should know about the laptop ahead of time.

A Friendly Word of Caution for those considering Ubuntu 17.10

I recently found myself missing the superior Gnome desktop environment while stuck with Unity in Ubuntu 16.04. That was the core motivator for me to make the switch to 17.10 which finally implemented Gnome as the standard environment.

Mine was not a smooth transition. Rebooting after the upgrade, I lost support for both keyboard and mouse. Booting to a live USB I ran into additional troubles with a known bug where obsolete packages from the existing system cannot be removed. Cutting my losses, I performed a fresh install and began rebuilding my applications from scratch.

There were numerous hiccups - issues with Java compatibility for my server, (resolved by rolling back to v8), and some third party applications have no support as of yet for 17.10. The only major unresolved issue at present is FreeFileSync. I've not yet found a comparable disk synchronization alternative for Linux and the application interface is a bit garbled in 17.10.

A word of caution for anyone considering making the jump - know what you're getting in to. And unless you desperately need a particular function only available in the new distro, you might be better off waiting another round.

But if you have given it a shot, I'd love to hear your results.

If anyone can explain VOIP, SD WAN, and MPLS systems and how they work to me like I'm 5 years old, that'd be pretty sweet.