That graphics card was a significant problem, as it was difficult to get hold of one, but it was worth the hassle.
The machine arrived quite early this morning, extremely well packaged. They had even put bubble wrap inside for additional shock protection - with a very clear warning on the top! Looking inside it has been very neatly assembled, no random loose wires. I added a CDROM drive I already had, and a second SSD, both of these robbed from the older machine. The SSD has all my working project files on it.
I installed devuan Linix 2.0.0 rc without any issues at all - no more inexplicable SystemD failures. I then built up the system with all my favourite programs. This was the most time consuming part of the install.
And the performance? Stunning! The machine is totally silent. There wasn't so much as a whisper when maxing out all 8 cores compiling the latest Rosegarden image! One of my most complex projects has to run at 5.33mS Latency on the old machine, and I didn't dare touch anything while it was going. On the new one I can run it at 1.33mS, and shuffle various windows around without a single Xrun.
Folderol is a very happy bunny
