I already used that to get my GPU.

There are plenty of NAS systems that use M.2 SSDs. Those should be pretty much silent. You might even have to sell only one kidney to afford the drives.

Gee, that’s a lot of homework.

Unless you want to go professional or do something for profit, I’d just get some cheap old box and start mucking about. Just make sure you don’t put any important data on it and be prepared to wipe it and start from scratch a few times. After a while you’ll have a better idea of what you want to do and a clearer way forward.

My work computer runs Windows 11, but our IT guys have turned off pretty much all the annoying bits, so it works pretty OK.

In 1995 I bought 4 MB of RAM for DM 200, which, adjusted for inflation probably works out to about €200 in today’s money. I’d say, prices have come down quite a bit, since.

Quite so. The cheapest card that I’d put any kind of real AI workload on is the 16GB Radeon 9060XT. That’s not what I would call budget friendly, which is why I consider a budget friendly AI GPU to be a mythical beast.

The budget friendly AI GPUs are in the shelf right next to the unicorn pen.

This is the way. Money will always get peoples’ attention.

Large corporations don’t buy small companies to make better products. They buy them to eliminate the competition.

There’s probably some lightweight Linux distro you can get to run on it. It could be used for some edge computing, like Pihole.

Mint is still a great choice if just for the ease of installation. I agree they’re lagging behind a bit in the transition to Wayland but for most users that’s not really a big issue. Mint also has one of the largest communities so getting support will be easier. To me Mint is still an excellent choice for getting started with Linux. I’ve been using it for years and I see no reason whatsoever to switch.

Thanks.

I have no idea what any of those things are. Which is not to say, you shouldn’t post this here, but a bit of context would be nice.

That’s terrible advice if retaining control of your data is in any way a priority.

If you know some Python, I’d look at Flask. It might be overkill for a static site but it’ll leave the door open for future expansion. If your goal is minimal effort, this is probably not the way to go.

I got a new laptop with Windows 11 at work yesterday. This is the first time I’ve used 11. I must say, it’s not really that bad. Once you cut out all the enshittification, which our IT department does, it’s pretty decent. I would never dream of putting it in any of my own machines, of course.

Mint is the easy and safe choice and works fine for anyone who just wants to use their computer with minimal fuss.

Next step could be installing it in a virtual machine. Dual booting can be a pain in the ass due to Windows not playing nice.

You can absolutely use Mint as a live system.