Best Specification for running OpenLP

nvbc

Hello Folks
Our church is looking to buy a new Windows Laptop to use for church services. We are currently using OpenLp portable version 3.1.3 on an Asus (FX504GD-E41275T) i5 machine which works quite well, but seems a little slow to load. The choice of PCs is endless so I wondered if there is a recommended specification please? thank you.

j_tizzle

Does it need to be new? I'm not sure what any of the devs might say about needed specs, but I purchased an older HP Z640 workstation a couple years ago. It has dual-Xeon processors and 32GB of RAM. I suspect it will continue functioning just fine for many years to come. In our case it runs Debian Linux, which is extremely stable (and doesn't change all that often). You may run into the problem with Windows 11 requiring a TPM but that's easily worked around. These can be found on ebay for under $200 and they're still quite powerful. It is actually overpowered for running OpenLP (which is the only thing it does), and that is never a problem. 🙂 If you insist on buying a new computer, then any modern hardware would be sufficient. The demands of OpenLP are not very high.

nvbc

Thank you for your reply. In response, no the new machine doesn't need to be new, but it does need to be new enough to be supported. Our other limitation is that it does need to be a laptop, as we need to pack all the IT away after services.
I am looking at a device with intel i5 (or AMD equivalent) and 16GB of RAM, is that good enough, or should I be looking at an i7 and/or 32 Gb RAM? Guess you think either will do.
Thanks again.

j_tizzle

Yes; any modern hardware should be sufficient to run OpenLP. My church has been running it since 2011; I haven't noticed any change in the power needed to run the software in that time, and we started out with some OLD hardware. Any reasonable laptop from the last five years or so would be sufficient. The specs you cite should be more than adequate. If you get a recent-ish AMD or Intel processor and 16GB of RAM you should be fine, even if you opt for a machine without a dedicated GPU. OpenLP is actually quite lean on resource requirements.