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Finally upgraded my home server (europe.pub)
submitted 7 hours ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Alternative Imgur version for the main image

Previously I was using Samsung N150P (netbook) as my home server and it served me around 6 years. >> https://programming.dev/post/708584

Though after upgrading to Debian 13, additional 90 packages were installed just with the upgrade. I also had a little adventure with it :) >> https://programming.dev/post/708488

Anyway, this new mini PC I got is from 2016 and surprisingly it has 8GB DDR3 RAM (I'm rich now). It's generally in good condition. Even though it's Celeron N3000, this one doesn't have hyperthreading so only 2 cores. Still it's a real upgrade over Atom N450 CPU.

Since last year, I was planning to get a Raspberry Pi and moving from there. However thanks to AI overlords it got so expensive I had to bail from that fantasy. I got this for 40$ and with 8GB RAM I think it was a good deal.

I was already planning to change my home server to Alpine for a while but I just couldn't touch a perfectly fine system because lazy. So this time I went with Alpine and I already love how small it is. I just installed a couple monitoring tools and packages like sudo along with Pi-hole so currently it has quite few packages.

Don't worry though, I'm planning to use that RAM, with time. :)

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[–] 28 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (16 children)

Honestly, AI pricing or not, raspi just isnt a good time for a home server. I used to churn through SD cards on mine, and the software compatibility was quite annoying, particularly with docker images. Intel x86 minipcs have been far easier to deal with IMO. And $40 is a bargain.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

    I've been using Rapsberry Pi's for almost a decade now and I have yet to burn out a single SD card on them. But maybe I don't really put them under the same strain others do.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

    It could be that I was using particularly shit SD cards, or putting too much continuous load on them, but I have killed a handful of them over the time I used them. I dunno, could be user error for sure.

    I have never managed to kill an SSD though, so I trust them much more.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 hours ago

    I mean, I think you have reason to trust SSDs more anyway. They're just physically designed for more wear and tear than SD cards are, even if I've never destroyed an SD card myself I'm aware of their lack of resilience compared to SSDs.

    And yeah, I always dropped the extra money for Samsung Pro SD cards, maybe that's part of it, too.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

    I agree with you about the sd cards. But pi 4 and higher can boot directly from SSD (in a usb enclosure, or for pi 5 via pci-e add on card). It takes a lot of the pain out of hosting on pi. I also still have an old pi 3b chugging along as a NUT server running off an sd-card with a read-only file system - another solution for the card rot problem.

    And they are still lower power then anything x86. For me a mix of both pi and mini-pc work great.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 hours ago

    I had a pi4 booting from a USB ssd, but it was very flakey. Just a slight bump on the SSD and it would disconnect and never remount, so I wasn't super confident with it. Happened with a few different SSDs on different ports as well.

    As for power, my pi4 + SSD was chugging down 15w, and the nuc that replaced it was also around 15w when limited properly, so it isnt as clear cut as it used to be. That was with identical services, homeassistant and a few local web services. I suspected the pi4 was never really able to idle.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago (1 child)

    My Pi 3b is configured to host PiHole, Unbound, and Kiwix (Wikipedia), yet it only writes to SD once a month for Kiwix, and once a week for PiHole. Unbound and all logs live in memory.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    I tried to get logs into memory, but found that it was a bit tedious chasing down a dozen or so services that logged to different places. And when my pi developed a spontaneous reset issue, not having logs was a bit of a problem.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

    Why Intel mini PCs? I run an AMD mini PC that seems to work great but I don’t ask much of it yet.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

    Not really Intel specific, just intel seems to be the most commonly available.

    I just lazily used "Intel" to mean x86.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

    Isn't Intel Quicksync needed for Jellyfin transcoding? I got a mini PC for my server and specifically looked only for Intel. Got another mini PC for my desktop workstation and specifically looked for a Ryzen, that iGPU is doing a great job of running all the games I'm interested in.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    Yeah I agree, I can do many more things with this comparing to RPi. Interestingly this one also has a microSD slot, though I went with regular SATA SSD and obviously it's quite faster than a system running on a microSD card. I just can't believe the pricing on RPi devices. It's almost three times the price here comparing to what I got.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    The pricing is just insane. Its $450-500AUD for a 16GB pi5 (without storage), and I recently got a secondhand nuc with 16GB and storage for $200AUD.

    Pis also don't seem to have a second hand market (which as a hoarder of pi3's I am part of the problem).

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 6 hours ago

    That's just a lot!

    Yeah, I checked second hand market and Pi's are almost none-existant here and the ones I found weren't cheap either. I also noticed that there were a lot of 32-bit Atom CPU mini PCs for 25$, but they were a downgrade from my netbook. Comparing to them 40$ is great I guess.

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    • [–] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    I run one of these thin clients:

    OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) x86_64 Host: HP ProDesk 400 G5 Desktop Mini Kernel: Linux 6.12.113+deb13-amd64 Uptime: 3 days, 21 hours, 47 mins Packages: 421 (dpkg) Shell: zsh 5.9 CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9500T (6) @ 3.70 GHz GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 630 @ 1.10 GHz [Integrated] Memory: 2.37 GiB / 15.47 GiB (15%)

    I bought it on ebay for ~£100. It idles between 3W - 5W and rarely goes over 20W.

    I have jellyfin and immich on it.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 5 hours ago

    I wouldn't call that a thin client, it's actually quite powerful for a home server IMO. :)

    Actually that's impressive wattage for idle usage.

    Immich is a good idea, though mine probably wouldn't run it well.

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    • [–] 4 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    https://www.ebay.com/itm/840057824814

    So close to something like this, eh? I had no idea Gigabyte ever even made mini PCs.

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    • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    Nice! Where did you but it?

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

    In Turkey. Comparing to US eBay prices our second hand market prices are quite high generally. This one didn't have a secure payment too, by secure I mean it wasn't protected by the website, basically bought it via paying over IBAN. It was kind of a gamble. I guess that was the reason why no one bought it before me. Lucky me. :)

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    • [–] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    I'm only a little jealous!

    Love these little boxes, so much better than a Pi for similar power consumption.

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    • [–] 4 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    What do you run, if you dont mind me asking?

    Currently scavenging parts for my own storage server, but i have an older NUC lying around that i freshen up for some added compute, just curious what you can do with that hardware.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 7 hours ago

    Currently only Pi-hole but I'll install Jellyfin and Syncthing soon. Initially I was planning to install Joplin server as well but since they started to lean on LLMs I'm looking for alternatives, maybe even something homemade, haven't decide yet. Surprisingly you can do many things with these devices. Even my netbook can do a lot of things, so I'm expecting more from this.

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    • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 child)

    Love to Alpine Linux! I run it on a mini PC as a home router and on a Raspberry Pi. It’s fantastic!

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