Alternative Computing, but at what cost?

You may have noticed that I have posted several pieces about using operating systems other than Windows over the last couple of years. Since then, I've had a few queries about how much it would cost to purchase hardware capable of running these alternative OS's. For your enlightenment, but possibly not your entertainment, here is my rough, ready and not entirely comprehensive guide to how much it would cost to buy into an OS that isn't Windows. Disclaimer here: this isn't a buying guide as such, with no recommendations about which OS to chose. That decision is up to you. I'm just giving you prices as of October 2020 and a personal comment on those prices where I think necessary. These comments are my own opinion, right or wrong as they may be. All prices are UK GBP unless stated and any conversion to other currencies is the value given by Google on 08/10/2020. These conversion prices do not include shipping, import duty and any other taxes, so watch out for that 20% VAT differential when comparing $ to £. Also, if I've missed something out, please let me know in the comments.

So, first up, we have the other two "mainstream" operating systems: Mac OS and Chrome OS. Neither should need much introduction so I'll just summarise the key points. 

Mac OS is restricted to Apple hardware, the cheapest of which is the Mac Mini starting at £799. You'll need a keyboard, mouse and display to use that but if you've already got those then you're set. If you don't, then you'll either need to factor in the cost of these or chose the next model up, the iMac, which starts at £1,099. Laptops start with the MacBook Air at £999, progressing to the 13-inch Macbook Pro starting at £1,299 and the 16-inch Macbook Pro, whose lowest price model will set you back £2,399. As you can see, these are not small sums of money and if Mac OS is your thing, consider these two caveats. One, Apple is transitioning their range from Intel processors to Apple Silicon (ARM-based) processors. Whilst there is no issue about legacy support (they've been good in previous transitions), there are rumours that the new machines may be slightly cheaper - but that's just a rumour. Also it will take time for Apple Silicon native software to be released, though their translation layer, Rosetta 2, seems to be good enough to run Intel native software in the mean time. The other caveat is that whilst the starting prices might not seem that high (relatively speaking), getting a spec that you want may take the price of the machine to eye-watering levels. For example, that £1,099 iMac - want a Retina 4K display instead of 1080p? £1,299. Want the 27 inch display instead of 21.5 inch? £1,799! And that's before you upgrade the memory or storage as I feel that no machine costing way north of a grand should have less than 16GB of memory these days. Oh, and if you want a Mac Pro, they start at £5,499. The wheels cost another £400 and let's not forget the monitor stand for £949. What about the monitor? Apple's Pro Display XDR will set you back ££4,599. Of course, you can easily buy second-user kit but that's not overly cheap as Apple gear holds its value very well.

Cost of entry: £799 and it only gets higher. 

Chrome OS from Google is available from a ton of manufacturers, such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Dell, HP and Google themselves. The issue here is that the budget machines (which can, at times, be had for well under £200, model depending) tend to suffer from budget issues (screen quality, lack of memory, small displays, poor keyboards etc) whereas the pricier machines (e.g. the Google Pixelbook Go) are, well, quite pricey - £629 for the base model. Want a faster processor and more storage? Step up the £829, £949 and £1,349 models! And therein lies the rub. Chrome OS is not that flexible an operating system. True, it does 80% or so of what you want to do but for similar prices to the Pixelbook Go, a Windows (or Mac OS) machine will give you more functionality. 

Cost of entry: Less than £200 though that can be pushed beyond the £1,000 barrier if you feel the need.

Now we get to the trio of operating systems that are less mainstream from a general consumer point of view (that's my Linux defence in place). As a reminder - this is my opinion on the cost of entry for these operating systems. I'm not taking into account what you may or may not want to use them for. Only you can do that and I already know how I do/would use each of the following operating systems.

Amiga OS

I'll be brutally honest, this is a hobbyist OS at best these days. But just like buses, when you want to talk about Amiga operating systems, there are three alternatives to consider. There is v3.1.4 (and the earlier 3.9 - it's briefly explained here) for Classic Amiga hardware, so anything running a Motorola 68k series processor as well as the Vampire boards, Amiga OS 4.1 and Morph OS. This makes things a tad complicated but from a personal point of view, OS 4.1 would be my preference if shopping for an Amiga OS computer. The problem here is that you need to have money to burn. The singular new build Amiga OS 4.1 desktop available now costs £1,799! Yes, I am aware of the Tabor/A1222 board but that's been on the cards for years now and you still can't buy the damn thing, never mind a complete desktop system. That and even though the board should be available for around four hundred euros (£365), a full system would be much more than that. For Amiga OS v3.1.4, you have older hardware that's now at frankly silly prices (and 25 plus years old) or the Vampire accelerator boards, the standalone version costing 579 euros (£530). With Morph OS, that requires either long-unsupported Amiga hardware or a G3/G4 powered Mac, and Apple finished the switch away from those processors in 2007, so good luck sourcing the hardware (or paying a reasonable price when you do find one for sale). As you can see, hobbyist OS with hobbyist pricing. It's do-able, certainly, but it'll cost you.

Cost of entry: Without existing kit, you'll face a steep second-hand market or costly, limited-run hardware. With existing kit, just the costly, limited-run hardware.

Linux

Linux and yes, before the pedants comment, I know Chrome OS is Linux-based but for the sake of this post, I am treating them separately, and that's before we get into the Google discussion. As you can see from my post here, if you have an older Win 7 machine then Zorin Lite will work really well on it. The other versions will suit more powerful hardware, as will pretty much every other Linux distro out there. The choice is yours and as long as you have the hardware, the actual OS tends to be free or very low in price. If you don't have the hardware but you don't want to buy brand new kit, check out places such as Morgan Computers and Tier1 (there are many others) for refurbished machines that can very easily handle Linux. But what if you want to buy new hardware with Linux pre-installed? Just how much would you need to spend to emulate the straight forward process of buying a Windows/Mac OS/Chrome OS device? The answer is, with a couple of exceptions, quite a bit!

The Zorin desktop.

Star Labs advertise two laptops, an 11 inch model for £399 and a 13.3 inch model for £699. For the spec of each machine, 8GB of memory and 240GB of storage for the lower price machine, 16GB and 240GB respectively for the higher price, is pretty good, and you have a choice of Linux distros too: Zorin, Manjaro, Ubuntu, elementary OS, MX Linux and Mint. The reviews seem pretty decent and if I were to buy a new build laptop with Linux pre-installed, UK-based Star Labs would be my first port of call.

Another decently priced vendor is Slimbook, where their Essential range of laptops start at 499 euros (£455). They offer numerous installs and dual-booting with Windows if you so wish. 

Juno Computers offer Linux laptops from £599 at the time of writing, which is a tad pricier but their range is much larger, as are the subsequent price tags. They only seem to offer Ubuntu as a default install though you can buy without an OS.

Prices get a bit sillier when we get to System 76. Their desktops start from $899 (£700) and the laptops from $1,099 (£850). Admittedly, this is a high-end manufacturer and even offer their own distro, Pop! OS alongside Ubuntu. Like Apple, the higher the spec, the more astronomical the price. 

The key thing to remember with Linux is that you are no further away than a free download in order to try it out. Zorin (as well as Puppy Linux, Peppermint OS, MX Linux among others) offers a boot from USB option to give you a taste, and you can always partition your main machine to offer a dual boot into Linux and Windows. 

Cost of entry: Without existing kit, not bad as starting at £400 brand new, less if buying second user hardware. With existing kit, free. Can't say fairer than that!

RISC OS

Finally, we have my favourite alternative OS, RISC OS. This OS could also be described as hobbyist. In fact, until a few years back, it was in a more unenviable position than Amiga OS, but that all changed with the release of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer. In fact, it's a Rasp Pi 3B+ that powers my RISCOSbits desktop that's been in steady use since August last year. That was just over £200 for the spec but, for now, let's start off at the lower end of the price range.

If you don't have a Rasp Pi to hand then this, gentle reader, is the cheapest way of experiencing RISC OS. This memory stick contains an emulator for RISC OS for Windows and Mac, plus the full source code for Linux users. At £14 all in, it's a neat way of having a go without spending too much money. I know this because the stick in the picture below is mine and I wanted to see how it compared to the Pi-based machine. The answer, well, not bad, though it is emulation and I prefer to use native hardware. Highly recommended though as a taster.

An entirely unexciting picture of a USB stick - the backing is colourful though.

If you want native hardware then your cheapest option is buying a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (NOT the Pi 4 as they're still porting the OS to the newer architecture though that is progressing well). You can either buy one yourself then download an image of RISC OS to an SD card or buy a ready made kit (as I did) from the likes of RISCOSbits, CJE Micros, and R-Comp. You're not just limited to the Pi, either. There's other ARM-powered boards that form the basis of RISC OS machines, but they can to cost a bit more - for example a Ti-Machine will set you back £899 which is at the top end of the market but still half the price of an Amiga X5000. 

If you want a laptop, then you're currently limited to variations of the PiTop or the Armbook, the latter of which I am slowly coming off the fence to purchase.

That's not all. There is still a healthy looking market for RISC OS machines and that is aided by the RISCOS Cloverleaf project. This is an effort to use crowd-funding to not only get new hardware out there but also fund development of the OS itself to bring it up to date. As time goes by, more information is released and they have posted the prices they'll be asking for when the crowd-funding begins for each of the five machines they want to release (two desktops, two laptops and an all-in-one design). These are 299 (£275) and 599 (£550) euros for the desktops (each figure contains 100 euros to support RISC OS development), 399 (£365) and 599 (£550) euros for the laptops (50 and 100 euros respectively for OS development) and 899 euros (£820) for the all in one (100 euros for development). Doing a straight euro to pound conversion reveals these prices to be reasonable, especially when you factor in the donation to the software side, but I'll have a dedicated post about this up in the next couple of days.

Cost of entry: Without dedicated ARM hardware, £14. With hardware, can be free. 

So there you have it, my (incomplete) price guide to some alternative operating systems to Windows. Lots of options to pretty much suit every wallet, if not every OS, but I hope you've found it informative.

Zorin OS - trying to bring an old laptop back into use.

This is a Compaq Presario CQ57-301SA laptop, a now elderly machine, dating from the back end of 2011. I recall getting it as part of a mobile phone contract bundle that seemed to make sense at the time and, to be fair to the Compaq, for the three years it saw use, it was good enough.

A sneaky shot of the dining room ceiling as well... you lucky people.

Equipped with an AMD E-300 1.3GHz CPU and Radeon graphics, 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive, this is not exactly a powerhouse. Indeed, with the bundled Windows 7 Home Edition, the machine's performance would be best described as stately. It was never a primary machine but did act as a good back up device even if it wasn't exactly a lightweight, weighing in at a smidge over 2.5Kg not including the 200g needed for the power adapter. The screen is a 15.6 inch 1366x768 number, which is average at best. You do, however, get a decent sized keyboard which is alright to use - not earth-shatteringly good but better than some laptops I have experienced. The touchpad is something else though, dimpled plastic that feels uncomfortable to use and is really not nice. As for the mouse buttons, they are loose and unresponsive unless you click them just right. Needless to say, as soon as this was brought home, a mouse was attached. The build quality is, again with that word, average. Plastic, but sturdy enough though there is some give around the centre of the hinge area that adds doubt as to this machine's ability to bounce. It's certainly lasted over the years with just a few scratches and marks but nothing that affected the operation of the machine. One nice thing to see is that the keyboard is solidly placed in the case. There is nothing more concerning when typing than when the whole thing flexes even under the lightest of pressure. I have found some modern day laptops, especially some of the cheaper HP and Lenovo types, are plagued by this. Battery life was about three and a half hours when new but I am not expecting anything like that now, though it is replaceable.

Not a powerful machine, even when new.

Connectivity is standard for the era: three USB 2.0 ports, the usual RJ45 connector for 10/100 Ethernet, full size SD/MMC card slot, audio in and out, as well as a 15 pin VGA port. A tray loading DVD-ROM drive and Kensington lock complete the exterior. Under the base, you can access the hard drive and memory for any upgrades you want to perform, though you are limited to 8GB of RAM. A note on the installed RAM - you lose nearly a quarter to video RAM for the integrated graphics, and Win 7 Home was always a bit iffy with less than 2GB to itself.

So why mention this machine now? Well, it's pretty much sat in the corner of a room for the last five years with just the occasional switch on to see if it still works, which it does. However, the OS has not been updated in years and performance is such that it is painfully slow to use. Having said that, it could still be of use as a simple text entry/web browsing machine, even if the battery is such that you can't stray far from a mains socket. It could also double as a portable retro games machine, especially with the keyboard - a flaw with the Lenovo Yogabook I posted about earlier in the year. But it couldn't be any of those things with the existing Windows install - the limited RAM and under-powered CPU would see to that, never mind the lack of updates. As a self confessed hoarder, I didn't really want to chuck it and besides, it still works.

This is where Zorin OS comes in.

And no, not this Zorin!

Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that promises a switchable user experience to provide interfaces similar to Windows and MacOS in order to comfort the new user. There are four versions available: Ultimate (which will set you back 39 Euros), Education, Core and Lite (all of which are free). The first three require a 1GHz dual-core 64-bit CPU, 2GB of RAM, between 10 and 20GB of storage and an 800x600 screen. The Lite version takes that entry spec even lower to a 700MHz single core 32-bit CPU, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage and a 640x480 screen. Given the limited specs of the Presario, I opted to test out the Lite version. A handy comparison of the different versions can be found here.

You can easily try out Zorin OS by downloading it from the their website and setting up a bootable USB drive. Instructions are easy to follow and it's simple to do. Once you have your USB drive ready, you then need to pop into your computer's BIOS to change the boot order so that the stick is picked up before the existing boot device (usually the hard drive or SSD that contains Windows). To do this, you'll need to press a specific key once you have switched on your computer - usually F1, Esc or, in this case, F10.

BIOS screen - bringing back DOS memories...

If you're not familiar to this style of screen, then I don't blame you. The sealed box style of computing popularised by Windows and MacOS means that you'll probably never have seen this before and I warn you now, if you do get curious, be careful. BIOS changes can cause more than a few problems, so with most of the options in here, if you don't need to change anything, don't!

For me, I just needed to change this menu so that when I plugged in the USB stick and powered the laptop on, it would boot off the Zorin OS image there. This was quickly done and I restarted the machine with the stick plugged in.

After a couple of minutes, I ended up with this - the Zorin OS desktop.

IT LIVES!!!

It looks nice, very relaxing in tone, familiar looking icons in familiar places and, to be honest, feels a bit more sprightly in use even though it's running off an old USB stick. This is a nice touch, by the way - you can try out the OS without nuking your existing OS install. After having a bit of a play about, I decided to go in for the full install - and yes, that meant no more Windows on the Presario.

Forty-five minutes later (it may be quicker for you given the age of the processor and the slow USB drive), the OS was installed and working fully. Wifi connectivity was just a password away and from there, it took another thirty five minutes to get all of the required updates installed. This was pretty much expected and didn't feel overly long.

There is a decent selection of software already installed (including Libre Office) but you have access to a respectable software store as well, which led me to FocusWriter, which I may come back to in a later post. There are hundreds of programs on here alone that could be useful to you and, of course, more if you search online via the included Firefox browser.

The Software Store.

In general use, while there are some pauses and stutters, these are nothing like the glacially slow experience of Win 7 on this machine. Boot up to a desktop (minus the time to input a password) is now less than 90 seconds. Some may scoff at that (and if this were anywhere near a modern spec, you perhaps should), but with Win 7, it was upwards for four minutes by the time the disk stopped thrashing. Not entirely sure what was going on there but the start up was as clean as I could make it. Even so, in use, it was terrible before, whereas now, it's perfectly usable as a basic productivity, web browsing and retro gaming machine (once I get RetroArch installed). In use, over the past week, the battery still seems to give about three and a half hours which, considering its age, is amazing. Also, if you're a person concerned with privacy and personal data collection, the team behind Zorin are quite proud to state clearly that they do not collect any private data about their users.

As for upgrades, I could double the RAM for less than £25 and the hard drive can easily be replaced by an SSD, something that would improve the responsiveness no end. OK, the processor is always going to be a drag on performance but hey, you can make little improvements here and there. All in all, not too bad for a nine year old basic spec machine. It'll certainly do.

And that, I think, is the point I am making here. I have seen quite a few people get rid of older Win 7 based computers because they believe that, as it's old and feels slow, it's clapped out, when all they need to do is try an alternative OS. The user experience is not that different, certainly not as jarring as moving from Windows to MacOS in my opinion, and unless you need specific software requirements (thinking Apple Music/iTunes), then you're pretty much covered for anything you need. The militant RISC OS user in me wants to scream out that you should be buying one of these from RISC OS Open for a tenner to see what proper alternative computing is all about, but practicalities in general use mean it's a bit more of a stretch for the average user - whatever constitutes an average user.

Give Zorin OS a try - you never know, you might like it. Of course, there are many more Linux distributions out there, but I picked this one because it caters for older hardware and tries to comfort new users to Linux. You don't have to be tied to Windows or MacOS if you take a little time and put a little thought into switching. I'm rather pleased with Zorin OS and having seen how well it performs on the Presario, I think it might be time to replace the old Ubuntu 11.10 install on my Asus Eee-PC...