I find myself a bit overwhelmed with hardware options during recent explorations. Seemingly everything can handle what I want a local copy of my Bandcamp archive to stream via jellyfin. Good times we’re in but even having good sysadmin skills, I wish someone would just tell me exactly what to buy.
> I wish someone would just tell me exactly what to buy.
I’ll bite.
You can save a lot of money by buying used hardware. I recommend looking for old Dell OptiPlex towers on Facebook Marketplace or from local used computer stores. Lenovo ThinkCentres (e.g., m700 tiny) are also a great option if you prefer something with a smaller form factor.
I’d recommend disregarding advice from non-technical folks recommending brand new, expensive hardware, because it’s usually overkill.
I spent so long trying to make Raspberry Pis work but they just kind of suck and everything is harder on them. I only just discovered that there are an infinite supply of these micro desktops second hand from offices/government. I was able to pick up a 9th gen intel with 16gb ram for less than the cost of a Pi 5, and it's massively more powerful.
Yeah, they’re amazing value. I paid $125 CAD for a 4th gen i7 with 16GB of RAM about 5 years ago. It’s been running almost 24/7 ever since with no issues.
You also don't have to deal with the usual annoyance of second hand gear like facebook marketplace and no delivery. These companies / governments have contracts with reseller companies who will buy the entire stock and sell them online just like buying new.
I just found their proprietary hardware and being ARM too limiting. I wanted to set up full disk encryption to set up nextcloud on, and found that on the pi this is an incredibly complex process. While on an x86 PC it's just a checkbox on install.
And then you can only use distros which have a raspberry pi specific build. Generic ARM ones won't work.
Yeah the complaints are fair. I stick to RPi OS for maximum compatibility. People have been crying for a Google Drive client for Linux for over a decade, but still have to set it up in rclone.
I build out my server in Docker and I’ve been surprised that every image I’ve ever wanted to download has an ARM image.
Way too expensive for their moderate performance. All serious self-hosters (not Youtube home-labbers) use x86 machines, often retired desktop/gaming rigs or used datacenter hardware.
I'm not familiar with Dell product names specifically but 'tower' sounds like it'll sit there burning 200W idle. Old laptops (sliding out the battery) is what I've been opting for, which use barely anything more than the router it sits next to. Especially if you just want to serve static files as GP seems to be looking for, an old smartphone will be enough but there you can't remove the battery (since it won't run off of just the charger)
Old optiplex’es sff or not idled between 15w and 30w. Id aim for sff’s specifically. I have run an ftp server for lab iso’s on a very old android phone - not fun.
Get started a corporate surplus mini pc on ebay. They super cheap - search for micro pc - if you get a recent CPU from Dell or Lenovo should be under $200, you can install Fedora or other Linux distribution. Ask Claude for everything else.
That's twice what I'd spend on a first server when you're still figuring out what you need!
My first "server" was a 65€ second-hand laptop including shipping iirc, in ~2010 euros so say maybe 100€ now when taking inflation into account. I used that for a number of years and had a good idea of what I wanted from my next setup (which wasn't much heavier, but a little newer cpu wasn't amiss after 3 years). Don't think one needs to even go so far as 200$ for a "local Bandcamp archive" (static file storage) and serving that via some streaming webserver
Jellyfin docs do mention "Not having a GPU is NOT recommended for Jellyfin, as video transcoding on the CPU is very performance demanding" but that's for on-the-fly video transcoding. If you transcode your videos to the desired format(s) upon import, or don't have any videos at all yet as in GP's case, it doesn't matter if the hardware is 20x slower. Worst case, you just watch that movie in source material quality: on a LAN you won't have network speed bottlenecks anyway, and transcoding on GPU is much more expensive (purchase + ongoing power costs) than the gigabit ethernet that you can already find by default on every laptop and router
Ive seen MM instances across defense dev teams for quite a while specifically to avoid Teams bs in the air force, gov teams does not like mixing with other orgs. Now it seems they’re actually going for contracts and Ill bet great money are mostly funded by USAF. Im very, very surprised.
I once went to a B-Sides talk of a person that paid off their mortgage via API related bounties - you wouldve confused their presentation with a Postman 101 video if you were only half listening.
The Xteink is almost two inches smaller than the Palma. I remember trying to read on early iphones that were 4.6-5 and hated the experience, the extra height matters.
I don't this is true. If this was true people in poor countries would have the least kids. You could argue that it is access to birth control + economic factors.
But even this doesn't seem to be true. I would say the most common reason is cultural. Average age of first pregnancy is nowadays very old. Definitely driven by culture. If you are to have your first child at over 30 it is very likely you will only be having 1. Which is below replacement levels. Also it creates a society of single child households, no siblings, and in my opinion too much focus on 1 child. Another cultural aspect I would say is the view of the importance of family.
I myself come from a very poor family in a developed nation. I am glad my mother didn't explain me out of existence due to economic factors.
Tangent/rant: And no, I'm not a right-winger. People's single opinion's on topics shouldn't dictate their view on all matters. This is such a weird US-centric phenomenon that is creeping to other countries...
It takes time and I encourage runners of any level to start thinking about running, if they like it, in yearlong blocks with annual goals. My longest race to day is a 30 mile trail ultra. Ive done a variety of sports all my life so the fitness base was there. Then I committed to specifically training for that distance. Truth be told - as long as your training is consistent, intentional and you want it, eating is the hardest part. By far. 100k is a different beast altogether. It takes a community to tackle 24-30 hours of ruunning!
The closest thing to affordable and comfortable I could find this past year after maintenance costs pilling up on my ‘15 Ford Fiesta (that I got for a staggering $14k post college) was a Honda HRV Sport. Has all the basics, incredible sensing system, lots of space decent gas mileage and drives well at around 28k in Ohio. My partner has an Accord and honestly its a better car. Incredibly good gas mileage, reliable, perfect for an A to B person that doesnt want to worry about their car.
“National security challenges” is incredibly broad, providing the right size of boots to USCG rescue swimmers could be considered a national security challenge.
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