Russell Coker: What Desktop PCs Need
It seems to me that we haven t had much change in the overall design of desktop PCs since floppy drives were removed, and modern PCs still have bays the size of 5.25 floppy drives despite having nothing modern that can fit in such spaces other than DVD drives (which aren t really modern) and carriers for 4*2.5 drives both of which most people don t use. We had the PC System Design Guide [1] which was last updated in 2001 which should have been updated more recently to address some of these issues, the thing that most people will find familiar in that standard is the colours for audio ports. Microsoft developed the Legacy Free PC [2] concept which was a good one. There s a lot of things that could be added to the list of legacy stuff to avoid, TPM 1.2, 5.25 drive bays, inefficient PSUs, hardware that doesn t sleep when idle or which prevents the CPU from sleeping, VGA and DVI ports, ethernet slower than 2.5Gbit, and video that doesn t include HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort 2.1 for 8K support. There are recently released high-end PCs on sale right now with 1gbit ethernet as standard and hardly any PCs support resolutions above 4K properly.
Here are some of the things that I think should be in a modern PC System Design Guide.
Power Supply
The power supply is a core part of the computer and it s central location dictates the layout of the rest of the PC. GaN PSUs are more power efficient and therefore require less cooling. A 400W USB power supply is about 1/4 the size of a standard PC PSU and doesn t have a cooling fan. A new PC standard should include less space for the PSU except for systems with multiple CPUs or that are designed for multiple GPUs.
A Dell T630 server has an option of a 1600W PSU that is 20*8.5*4cm = 680cc. The typical dimensions of an ATX PSU are 15*8.6*14cm = 1806cc. The SFX (small form factor variant of ATX) PSU is 12.5*6.3*10cm = 787cc. There is a reason for the ATX and SFX PSUs having a much worse ratio of power to size and that is the airflow. Server class systems are designed for good airflow and can efficiently cool the PSU with less space and they are also designed for uses where people are less concerned about fan noise. But the 680cc used for a 1600W Dell server PSU that predates GaN technology could be used for a modern GaN PSU that supplies the ~600W needed for a modern PC while being quiet. There are several different smaller size PSUs for name-brand PCs (where compatibility with other systems isn t needed) that have been around for ~20 years but there hasn t been a standard so all white-box PC systems have had really large PSUs.
PCs need USB-C PD ports that can charge a laptop etc. There are phones that can draw 80W for fast charging and it s not unreasonable to expect a PC to be able to charge a phone at it s maximum speed.
GPUs should have USB-C alternate mode output and support full USB functionality over the cable as well as PD that can power the monitor. Having a monitor with a separate PSU, a HDMI or DP cable to the PC, and a USB cable between PC and monitor is an annoyance. There should be one cable between PC and monitor and then keyboard, mouse, etc should connect to the monior.
All devices that are connected to a PC should use USB-C for power connection. That includes monitors that are using HDMI or DisplayPort for video, desktop switches, home Wifi APs, printers, and speakers (even when using line-in for the audio signal). The European Commission Common Charger Directive is really good but it only covers portable devices, keyboards, and mice.
Motherboard Features
Latest verions of Wifi and Bluetooth on the motherboard (this is becoming a standard feature).
On motherboard video that supports 8K resolution. An option of a PCIe GPU is a good thing to have but it would be nice if the motherboard had enough video capabilities to satisfy most users. There are several options for video that have a higher resolution than 4K and making things just work at 8K means that there will be less e-waste in future.
ECC RAM should be a standard feature on all motherboards, having a single bit error cause a system crash is a MS-DOS thing, we need to move past that.
There should be built in hardware for monitoring the system status that is better than BIOS beeps on boot. Lenovo laptops have a feature for having the BIOS play a tune on a serious error with an Android app to decode the meaning of the tune, we could have a standard for this. For desktop PCs there should be a standard for LCD status displays similar to the ones on servers, this would be cheap if everyone did it.
Case Features
The way the Framework Laptop can be expanded with modules is really good [3]. There should be something similar for PC cases. While you can buy USB devices for these things they are messy and risk getting knocked out of their sockets when moving cables around. While the Framework laptop expansion cards are much more expensive than other devices with similar functions that are aimed at a mass market if there was a standard for PCs then the devices to fit them would become cheap.
The PC System Design Guide specifies colors for ports (which is good) but not the feel of them. While some ports like Ethernet ports allow someone to feel which way the connector should go it isn t possible to easily feel which way a HDMI or DisplayPort connector should go. It would be good if there was a standard that required plastic spikes on one side or some other way of feeling which way a connector should go.
GPU Placement
In modern systems it s fairly common to have a high heatsink on the CPU with a fan to blow air in at the front and out the back of the PC. The GPU (which often dissipates twice as much heat as the CPU) has fans blowing air in sideways and not out the back. This gives some sort of compromise between poor cooling and excessive noise. What we need is to have air blown directly through a GPU heatsink and out of the case. One option for a tower case that needs minimal changes is to have the PCIe slot nearest the bottom of the case used for the GPU and have a grille in the bottom to allow air to go out, the case could have feet to keep it a few cm above the floor or desk. Another possibility is to have a PCIe slot parallel to the rear surface of the case (right angles to the other PCIe slots).
A common case with desktop PCs is to have the GPU use more than half the total power of the PC. The placement of the GPU shouldn t be an afterthought, it should be central to the design.
Is a PCIe card even a good way of installing a GPU? Could we have a standard GPU socket on the motherboard next to the CPU socket and use the same type of heatsink and fan for GPU and CPU?
External Cooling
There are a range of aftermarket cooling devices for laptops that push cool air in the bottom or suck it out the side. We need to have similar options for desktop PCs. I think it would be ideal to have a standard attachments for airflow on the front and back of tower PCs. The larger a fan is the slower it can spin to give the same airflow and therefore the less noise it will produce. Instead of just relying on 10cm fans at the front and back of a PC to push air in and suck it out you could have a conical rubber duct connected to a 30cm diameter fan. That would allow quieter fans to do most of the work in pushing air through the PC and also allow the hot air to be directed somewhere suitable. When doing computer work in summer it s not great to have a PC sending 300+W of waste heat into the room you are in. If it could be directed out a window that would be good.
Noise
For restricting noise of PCs we have industrial relations legislation that seems to basically require that workers not be exposed to noise louder than a blender, so if a PC is quieter than that then it s OK. For name brand PCs there are specs about how much noise is produced but there are usually caveats like under typical load or with a typical feature set that excuse them from liability if the noise is louder than expected. It doesn t seem possible for someone to own a PC, determine that the noise from it is what is acceptable, and then buy another that is close to the same.
We need regulations about this, and the EU seems the best jurisdiction for it as they cover the purchase of a lot of computer equipment that is also sold without change in other countries. The regulations need to also cover updates, for example I have a Dell T630 which is unreasonably loud and Dell support doesn t have much incentive to be particularly helpful about it. BIOS updates routinely tweak things like fan speeds without the developers having an incentive to keep it as quiet as it was when it was sold.
What Else?
Please comment about other things you think should be standard PC features.
Dear Debian community,
this is bits from DPL for March (sorry for the delay, I was waiting
for some additional input).
Conferences
In March, I attended two conferences, each with a distinct motivation.
I joined FOSSASIA to address the imbalance in geographical developer
representation. Encouraging more developers from Asia to contribute to
Free Software is an important goal for me, and FOSSASIA provided a
valuable opportunity to work towards this.
I also attended Chemnitzer Linux-Tage, a conference I have been part of
for over 20 years. To me, it remains a key gathering for the German Free
Software community a place where contributors meet, collaborate, and
exchange ideas.
I have a remark about submitting an event proposal to both FOSDEM and
FOSSASIA:
Cross distribution experience exchange
A new release 0.1.8 of 
A few months ago 
Update 20250309 13:20-03:00 - How to help
A friend of mine living in the USA sent me this link to help the flood victims: 
The "real" thing
Let's get to the heavy, heartbreaker part. I did go to downtown Bah a Blanca, but during night, so let me share some links, most of them in Spanish, but images are images:
In today s digital landscape, social media is more than just a communication tool it is the primary medium for global discourse. Heads of state, corporate leaders and cultural influencers now broadcast their statements directly to the world, shaping public opinion in real time. However, the dominance of a few centralized platforms X/Twitter, Facebook and YouTube raises critical concerns about control, censorship and the monopolization of information. Those who control these networks effectively wield significant power over public discourse.
In response, a new wave of distributed social media platforms has emerged, each built on different decentralized protocols designed to provide greater autonomy, censorship resistance and user control. While 
Mastodon was created in 2016 by 
Interestingly, 
If you re automating CI builds, there s even a GitHub Action to make your workflows faster essentially doing what 
Warning: 
After circling a bit to find somewhere suitable (there appear to be construction
works in the park!) I set up my gear in 2C with frost on the ground, called CQ,
spotted and got nothing on either the end fed half wave or the cheap vertical.
As it was too late for 20m, I tried 40 and a bit of 80 using the inbuilt tuner,
but wasn t heard by stations I called or when calling independently.
I packed everything up and lora-doofered my way home, mildly deflated.
After a mild struggle on 2m, I set up the end fed the first hill and got to
work from the old hill fort:
The end fed worked flawlessly. Exactly as promised, switching between 7MHz, 14MHz, 21MHz
and 28MHz without a tuner was perfect, I chased hills on all the bands, and had a
great time. Apart from 40m, where there was absolutely no space due to a
contest. That wasn t such a fun time!
My fingers were bitterly cold, so on went the big gloves for the descent and I
felt like I was warm by the time I made it back to the car.
It worked so well, in fact, I took the 1/4 wave cheap vertical out my bag and
decided to brave it on the next activation.
To get some height for the feedpoint, I wrapped the coax around my winder a
couple of turns and trapped it with the elastic while draping the coax over the
trig. This bought me some more height and I felt clever because of it. Maybe a
pole would be easier?
From here, I worked inter-G on 40m and had a wee pile up, eventually working 15
or so European stations on 20m. Pleased with that!
I had been considering a third hill, but home was the call in the failing light.
Back to the car I walked to find my key didn t have any battery, so out came the
Audi App and I used the Internet of Things to unlock my car. The modern world is
bizarre.
I set up at the cairn and picked up 30 contacts overall, split between 40m and
20m, with some inter-g on 40 and a couple of continental surprises. 20 had
longer skip today, so I saw Spain, Finland, Slovenia, Poland.
On teardown, I managed to snap the top segment of my brand new mast with my
cold, clumsy fingers, but thankfully sotabeams stock replacements. More money at
the problem, again.
Back to the car, no app needed, and homeward bound as the light faded.
At the end of the weekend, I find myself finally over 100 activator points and
over 400 chaser points. Somehow I ve collected more points this year already
than last year, the winter bonuses really do stack up!
This weekend I discovered it s possible to have height maps for nice 3d
maps and contours marked on the map - you just need to download some
additions for the maps. This is a really nice feature, it makes maps more
pretty and more useful when you re in the middle of nowhere.
As part of their "Defective by Design" anti-DRM campaign, the FSF recently made the following claim: