Edit: It works! Not beautiful and shows a concerning amount of “Error” lines on startup but it will do. I got VSCodium and ESP-IDF running, at least – and CMake isn’t awfully slow despite it being a crappy 4GB RAM machine (not easily upgradeable). The first boot took a while and I haven’t rebooted since, I guess it will be below 30 seconds next time (Mint on same machine but HDD was about 1 minute).

Edit: I hope I chose the right kernel here, surprisingly not much info online on this! Also, I picked “targeted” because the 10-year-old system does not use any cutting-edge hardware and all drivers should be auto-detected, I think.

After some experience with Linux Mint, I gathered the courage to try another distro. I’d like to turn an old laptop into an IPTV receiver plus FTP/OpenVPN/HomeAssistant server with occasional desktop use. I first installed Windows 11 just in case my family needs to use it (it fucking sucks, the built-in PS/2 keyboard doesn’t work half the time but that’s an issue for later) but now I’ll be turning it into a dual-boot setup with Debian as the primary option. Please give me some encouragement, I’m really afraid of new things.

Old pic: https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d4bf0222-4fc1-42ab-a3e9-464087dec3af.png

  • HairyHarry@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 days ago

    Is a laptop really a good choice for a home server?

    What are the pro/cons vs a mini computer like a raspy or sort of? Is it trivial to keep the laptop always on without closing the lid?

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      8 days ago

      Raspberry Pi is expensive and does not come with a UPS. I already have this mediocre laptop. The Pi cost may recoup itself on the electricity bill but I’m not happy about booting from an SD card.

      The only lid problem is that the BIOS of this laptop does not allow turning on with the lid closed (also, there is no Power-on-AC) but I might hack it with a magnet.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          8 days ago

          I mean, the good old dumb 32" LCD TV should be the primary screen. But maybe mom will want to watch in another room sometimes, in which case she can pull out the laptop and use her familiar IPTV client.

      • notagoblin@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 days ago

        You can run your Pi’s from an sata SSD, I’ve never used SD successfully long term. The lid. Maybe you could tell OS not to shut down when you close the lid and set it never to sleep or turn off? Used that on an old HP laptop (intel 6th gen) with broken screen, KDE, Jellyfin server. Might be worth a look Edit: in power settings…