You can get an adapter board that will make it work with an M.2 SSD. I believe it’s only PCIe 2.0, so there’s no point putting a high end SSD in it unless you need a high write endurance. Any SSD will be a huge improvement over a hard drive.

Most Linux distros will run on it since it’s using a 64 bit Intel CPU. If you have the version with 4GB of RAM, you will need something very lightweight though. I would run Debian if I was going to use it as a server or Mint if I was going to use it as a desktop.

The Mac Mini should still be perfectly usable if you put Linux on it and upgrade it to an SSD.

No, you don’t need a VPN if you’re using a seedbox.

I haven’t had any issues with public trackers on ultra.cc. I probably download about 100 or so public torrents a month, but that’s not new release stuff that’s likely to get a DMCA notice.

The VPN killswitch is not safe for bittorrent, it doesn’t work fast enough. Binding the torrent client to the VPN interface is safe though.

I backup stuff on blurays and DVDs a couple times a year. I also wrote a copy of FreeDOS and some software onto a stack of floppies recently.

Torrents don’t need trackers either. They can work with just DHT.

Run an iperf test to see if the ethernet adapter is working correctly. The speed tests on my USB ethernet adapter are almost identical to an integrated one as long as it’s connected to a USB 3 port.

I would recommend installing Heroic Launcher too. It works good for GoG, Epic & Amazon games.

So what happens when the certificate expires? Do you get locked out if you don’t have physical access?

If you don’t have a port forwarded for your torrent client, then only the people that do will be able to download from you. Unfortunately, most VPN providers don’t support port forwarding.

There is a PipeWire module for ASHA. It looks like it has issues with a lot of devices though.

My windows XP install kept breaking and I got tired of fixing it, so I tried Linux and never went back.

Yes, that’s fine as long as whatever you’re hosting is designed to be safely used on the internet. Just keep it up to date and only expose the stuff you need to. I would suggest setting up fail2ban to block IPs that repeatedly fail to log in though. Depending on what you’re hosting, you may need bot protection, but if all they can see is a login page, they shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Just make sure you’re not using an EUI64 address. That significantly narrows down the number of addresses per subnet to scan. The bots found one of my computers that was using one. It took them 3 years to find it though.

I use inleed.xyz. It’s free, has IMAP/SMTP access and you can have as many accounts as you want. It’s limited to 1GB of storage shared between all accounts though.

If you use the web UI, you can adjust the zoom in your browser.

Try a different cable too.

Yes, if you have IPv6, you can open a port in the firewall and have external access. Whatever you are accessing it from must have IPv6 as well though.

MakeMKV works great on Linux. I used it to backup all of my blurays and DVDs without any issues.

Use SSH. Ether open a port in the firewall or connect it to a VPN. If the backups are done on a schedule, you could also setup a cron job on the Pi to send the WoL packet a few minutes ahead of time.