DigitalDilemma

Best answer.

Extra tip: You can combine the two last commands with: systemctl enable --now <unit name>.service

Best is Framework in every regard. Works 100%, great Linux support, specify exactly what you want and it’s fully repairable. (They’re also by far the most satisfying machine to unbox, given you have to plug it all together yourself)

Lenovo and Dell are okay, in my experience. The odd thing but generally fair quality hardware and reasonably compatible. (Thinkpad quality isn’t what it used to be, so don’t pay a premium thinking it’ll last, Lenovo are trading on its past glories)

Avoid HP - shoddy flimsy things now, and with a lot of bespoke drivers (graphics and audio, plus function buttons in particular)

There’s quite a lot of random-branded Chinese laptops around now. I’ve no direct experience of them, but I imagine they’re exactly how you’d expect them to be. Cheap, tailored for the OS they ship with, but will probably work to some degree. Linux is past its initial hardware problems (and to be fair, hardware is problematic now)

There’s another thread that’s a few years old, but still contains some useful info - such as “Check the Arch Wiki”

Love what these guys are doing.

There’s also a mainboard case, so you don’t need the whole laptoppy thing at all if you don’t want to

https://frame.work/gb/en/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case

So I did - thanks for the correction, edited.

I… did not know that. Thanks, TIL!

Absolutely, but when you do need it, it’s brilliant.

Sorry, I should have explained that. it’s command | yes yes|command - Eg, yes|apt-get update (Not a great example since apt-get has -y, but sometimes that fails when prompting for new keys to accept)

Edit: I got it backwards, thanks @lengau@midwest.social for the correction.

yes

The most positive command you’ll ever use.

Run it normally and it just spams ‘y’ from the keyboard. But when one of the commands above is piped to it, then it will respond with ‘y’. Not every command has a true -y to automate acceptance of prompts and that’s what this is for.

Don’t be silly, the Linux community has never told me to hate someone just because they’re differen… Oh.

And besides, there’s no arcane practices or secret knowledg… Oh.

Carry on.

How we’ve done it recently:

1. Put domain on cloudflare or another registrar that supports an API. Generate a token with the right privs.
2. Use certbot with the cloudflare plugin, and that token, and generate whatever certs you need within that domain using the DNS01 method.

No need to have port 80 open to the world, no need for a reverse proxy, no need for NAT rules to point it to the right machine, no need to even have DNS set up for the hostname. All of that BS is removed.

The token proves your authentication and LetsEncrypt will generate the certs.

I agree, Grub is horrendous and one of the most complex systems in linux. Grub2 is even worse, and searching the web for help is difficult as the two are named interchangeably, despite being hugely different in design.

Random files spread over the filesystem. Some you edit, some are done automatically, some are done by kernel upgrades, some you need to run yet more commands for them to work - and it all differs from distro to distro. The sooner more distros move away from this, the better.

wade through hundreds of AI generated pages of useless information

I personally find the best use of AI is to read those pages of useless information and summarise what I actually want to know.

Google: " hugo, show total number of posts not including pages " = advertising, a billion pages of partially but not entirely relevant information that takes ages to wade through.

Gemini: same question: Clear explanation and working examples in seconds.

They’re both google, but one knows what I’m actually trying to say and doesn’t (yet) push advertising at me.

Neither. Cinnamon on Debian. Has just enough bling to be pretty and still manages not to be fat, and pretty similar to both your choices.

I think your reply would have been more useful if you’d given some pointers about how, instead of just “do it right”.

It’s fine, but not going to be the cheapest.

Cheap to buy: Any old PC desktop, really. Most will run linux and windows fine, depending on what you want. Anywhere from free to £100. If you have an old desktop or laptop already, use that to start with.

Cheap to run: Any mini PC. I run a Lenovo ThinkCentre M53 for low power duties. Cost £40 and runs silently at 10watts, idle. (I have a secondary, much beefier server for other stuff that runs at around 100w which lives in the garage)

But plenty of people do run mac minis as home servers, often on Linux. They’re fine - just do your homework on the CPU ability, how much ram you can add, and whether you’re okay with external disks if you can’t fit enough inside.

As far as I can read from that, they’re still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?

Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.

Fair play - it’s good that there’s choice and if it works for you, great. I also totally get the fun of building something yourself.

The local storage is a big one if you don’t have a nas or home server on the network. Although, if you’re linked into the *arrs then I would think most people already do. It’s nice when new episodes just turn up automagically in Jellyfin.

I tried Kodi before but I found the commercialisation of it very jarring. Jellyfin is entirely free - your fifth point might give it extra credit for that. The Jellyfin app doesn’t (afaik) feed any info to anyone, but you do need to load it from the Amazon fire menu, so you can’t entirely skip their advertising. It is the only thing I use the fire stick for, and the price is cheap compared to anything else - it cost £25 and works on any TV. Being a dongle, there’s no noise either.

Why not? It’s a computer that displays tv? At 4k, 5.1 audio, that’s not too shabby, no?

I made a PC specifically for streaming video back before sticks were a thing, but it was expensive, noisy and not very good in comparison and I don’t miss it. What about a stick is inferior to what you’re talking about? Genuine question - educate me, please. What software, what hardware, why choose it over something else?

Using the native Jellyfin app available for Amazon’s fire tv stick.

Not really suitable for a Home Theatre PC

Not sure where you got that idea, but it’s absolutely what I use it for. That I can also watch content from multiple sources as well is part of the appeal. Plus no constant upsell like Kodi and Emby.