Ceph. I have some Raspberry Pi’s that I’m going to set up a cluster with. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I half expect the performance to be relatively terrible, but maybe it won’t and I can try to build something on top of the cluster in a sort of hyper converged setup.

It’s completely overkill for a small home lab but that’s what makes it fun.

Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System

Just use Debian. Why use the inferior downstream distros when you can go right to the OG? You are already halfway there already.

Debian doesn’t have a corporate sponsor so there is no risk of getting spammed or giving someone your personal information.

My recommendation for that price range is to buy a used business-class laptop. Emphasis on the business-class. These are the Dell Latitudes and the HP ProBooks. Try to find something less-than five years old (businesses tend to phase out older laptops in the three or four year mark). Buy from a reputable re-seller that offers support in case you get a lemon.

It won’t be the fastest or sexiest laptop out there. But it will be long lasting and reliable.

Yes! I’ve used that before.

I spun up a trial version of Windows Server and tried to get it working. It seemed to want a Domain environment and I didn’t want to go down that road. There probably is a way to do it without setting up a Domain but I didn’t feel like messing with it at the time.

I have a Windows VM on my server. If I need MS Office or any Windows-only program I just use Remmina to RDP in and get stuff done.

Windows has pretty good touch support over RDP so I can even do this from my phone or tablet if I need a full desktop on the go (using a VPN).

Do you have any code written? Generally speaking people are willing to help but won’t write your project for you.

That’s a good idea too. I’ll have to look into that.

I always run my queries in a script that will automatically rollback if the number of rows changed isn’t one. If I have to change multiple rows I should probably ask myself what am I doing.

I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2013 on a Windows 11 VM.