Clear Linux on Intel NUC6i7KYK Skull Canyon

End of 2016 I’ve asked myself again (like every year before): “Is 2017 the Year of the Linux Desktop — also for me?” This question triggered a short desktop hardware shopping but rather looong-ish Distro Hopping endeavour — which ended in a suprise (#spoileralert)…

Hardware

• Mini PC Intel® NUC Kit NUC6i7KYK (a.k.a NUC Skull Canyon)
• 32GB RAM (2x Crucial 16GB DDR4 2133 MT/s (PC4-17000) SODIMM CT16G4SFD8213)
• 2x Samsung SSD 960 PRO 512GB, M.2

Software

• Debian 8 Jessie
• Arch Linux (though quite happy for +4 month)
• RHEL 7
• Debian 9 Stretch (my goto fallback, because: “Debian always and forever”)
• NixOS (currently evaluating on 2nd drive…)

OS of choice (as of writing): Clear Linux from Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center

While the Clear Linux Project for Intel® Architecture is actually built…

• primarily for various Cloud use cases
• and to showcase “the best of Intel architecture technology and performance, from low-level kernel features to complex applications that span across the entire OS stack”

…the emphasis on Power and Performance optimizations along w/ the (rather recent) switch from Xfce to GNOME makes for a pretty nice desktop experience.