With the arrival of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, aka Jammy Jellyfish, it’s time to build a new Linux box. Hard to believe that another four years has already passed. I’m still happy with the old one, but the fans are a bit noisy, and I’d like to up performance. Note that this computer is an “always-on” dedicated music server for Roon software, containing a 4TB RAID1 with my music collection. And that’s just about all I use it for: ripping CDs to the library, running Roon server, the occasional DVD or CD burn, and of course, having the Linux environment at home to keep my itjerk skills up.
Over the years, I’ve found myself gravitate almost exclusively to the Windows environment for “day to day” computing. Why? It’s just fine for me. Other than running a few applications (mostly InDesign), the vast majority of my desktop experience is inside a web browser. Yours too, probably. And as someone that’s spent the past 20+ years in desktop support, I’m completely agnostic about Mac vs Windows vs Linux. Whatever costs less should be one’s top choice, not some brand fetish. Whether it’s a Dell or any Apple, Windows or macOS or Ubuntu, a properly maintained computer is both safe and secure. “Better” is subjective.
I’ve chose an Intel i3-10105 processor for the computer because a) it’s the cheapest I could find ($89) and b) it gives me plenty of “boost” from the current G4400 Pentium; more cores/threads/cache, faster clock, and only mildly less power efficiency (65w vs 54w). For the motherboard, I’ll need an LGA 1200 socket and a quick look at the Microcenter website yields the ASUS H510M-E Prime Intel microATX for $85. I’ll throw in a very fast 256GB NVMe M.2 drive for $32 for the boot drive and that’s about all I need. I have 8GB of DDR4 2133 RAM from the previous build that to reuse (along with case, power supply, etc). That’s a total bill of $202 for new computer “guts”.
The very first thing to do is ensure I have a backup of the RAID1. I’m going to transfer the RAID card and drives to the new mobo, which should go without a hitch (it did), but having a fresh backup gives me 100% peace of mind. I’m getting a new M.2 boot drive, so I’ll have the previous SSD to copy things over. Then, I’ll be sure to get a list of programs I’ll need to reinstall along with bookmarks, config files and my bash history (a wealth of knowledge!). With an initial minimum install of Ubuntu, I’ll need a few things, but mostly they and their dependencies relate to Roon, CD ripping and playback (notably Fre:AC and it’s config files!), plus a few DVD programs like Handbrake, DeeVeeDee and DVDAE. No need to bring extra software baggage to a clean install; if I forgot something, I can always install later.
One thing about the installation: maybe I’m getting old or maybe the lighting was just bad, but I did have to recheck some of my connections inside the case. RAM wasn’t clipped completely, USB header was off and I didn’t push the audio plug in all the way! The old SPDIF card I had doesn’t have the right pin config, so I’ll splurge $17 for a new one.
After downloading Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, I burned a DVD of the iso but it didn’t work. So I quickly made a USB drive and installation was fine. I did a minimal install, no encryption (PITA to enter a password and no way to do it remotely). I did get a couple boot warnings, but after I updated the mobo’s BIOS and the ACPI warning went away, while enabling VMX in the BIOS advanced settings corrected that. Still have “SGX disabled in BIOS” to deal with. One other thing, when the computer boots, it doesn’t display the RAID card’s screen. Hmmm.
the itjerk 
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