@SineWave - I have an idea in mind for this "offline/web/audio PC" solution that you might find useful.
I'm in process of designing home workhorse computing cluster consisting of three PCs with quad-i7.
This cluster would be without internet, but sharing a gigabit connection with each other.
On different subnet there would be the internet segment - RPi3 as Media Center and Always-on laptop (which act as Samba, Apache and Icecast server) with Windows 7 running VM with LUbuntu.

Everytime there's need to use internet, it'd be possible either directly from this always-on PC, or through UltraVNC or RDP from the cluster (98% of cases).
Desktop would also have two gigabit ethernet cards - one for cluster and one for internet (also set for sharing Kontakt sample drive between cluster). Everytime there's need to use internet from desktop (2% of cases, for example for MMORPG), the other network card would be disabled, thus securing this workspace from any threats.
Sorry if it's not clear, I'm still working on the final concept.

 

Last edited: Jul 16, 2016

I never had any problems with W10, I guess I'm lucky.

 

okay, so today i decided to try an experiment. i pulled out my 8-years-old gateway fx6800-01e desktop pc that has been sitting unused for the past four years under my work table. since i had cannibalized a few parts over the years, i first needed to put the beast back together. i added a cheap 120gb ssd ($35 on sale on amazon) to use as the os drive, wiped clean an old western digital 1tb "green" drive that was gathering dust in my closet and added it to the box for storage. i scrounged up a couple of sata cables to get everything connected. then i installed an old copy of windows 7 that was lying around. everything went well. next, i chose the free upgrade to windows 10. microsoft examined my pc and said everything was fine for the upgrade.

now i had a couple issues trying to do the upgrade from the link on the website, so i opted to download the "media creation tool" and create the install media on a 4gb usb thumb drive that was actually older than the old gateway desktop. installation of windows 10 from the usb was quick, easy and went smoothly. i now have a fully functional 8-years-old windows 10 pc with a i-7 quad core processor, 9gb of ram, and a seriously outdated video card. from the time i press the power button, to the time i am in windows is less than 30 seconds and 20 seconds of that is the hardware boot-up. once the actual windows boot starts it takes less than 10 seconds (including password entry).

i find this to be amazing.an 8-year-old piece of hardware (plus a $35 hard drive) is running faster than it ever did. it's a pretty sweet machine actually.

 

@Andrew I love your VNC based concept! So easy to do. Connect just one computer with Linux to the internet and you can VNC from all the other computers to it! Brilliant. Easier to setup than my dual-boots and separate computers and OSes.

With your solution you can have as many audio workstations as you want, link them and share the resources between them, use multiple PCs for processing VST plugins if you use Reaper with ReaMote, and you can use the safe Internet from any one of them easily. Thank you for posting this!

 

You're welcome.
I'll try to post the exact network topology once I'm done with this, as with VNC you really can't get hardware acceleration that easily (useful for playback of YT videos).
Furthermore I intend to expand it with WOL (Wake on LAN), so that the PCs in the cluster can be turned on and off remotely, thus saving power when not needed.

 

I never had any problems with Win 10 either, up until the time that I did

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2016

I never had any problems with W10, because I don't use it.

But seriously, it would be just too much for me. I'm using XP, W7, Debian Linux, and even OSX. They all serve me well for different purposes. Why would I want another OS? I have so much fun with these, especially Linux. Learning new things is fun, guys! I find Windows absolutely boring and dull after so many years of use [since v3.0].

Hell, I'm also tinkering with Symbian, Android, and good old Atari TOS and MacOS9.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2016

You guys should also look into CopperLAN. It's a bit like ReWire on steroids, making it perfect for anyone with ridiculously massive Kontakt libraries [you know who you are ;) ].

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2016

A really good Windows 10 related thread on Slashdot for those who are interested.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/0...nal-data-issues-microsoft-with-formal-warning