Caution: Some may find this tl;dr. In that case, these are not the droids you are looking for…
For several months now I have been trying to figure out how to fit my dream within the reality of my constraints. What would I do if there were no limitations?
Dream
Powerful Linux Laptop With All The Ports (Preferably A Workstation Class ThinkPad P15 or Dell Precision 7750)
Dedicated NAS
Dedicated Proxmox
Plex, Rsync to Backblaze, Nextcloud available internally and externally
One or two POE security cams
Microcontroller and Raspberry Pi kit for experimenting
iPad Air Current Gen with Apple Pen for reading and note taking
Limitations
Money (I would feel guilty spending more than $2,000 or so all in)
Physical Disability (I spend the majority of each 24 hour period in a recliner) Also, increasingly poor eyesight (not terrible), but at 45 years old I have had to increase the font on my iPhone, and can no longer use it for reading comfortably.
No place to hide away a loud and large homelab setup
No “need” for any of these things. Their primary use is to keep my brain occupied. I will never gain monetarily as I am unemployable.
What I Currently Have
T-Link Archer C2300 Router
Unknown Modem (Arris that caps at 300Mbps which Comcast keeps telling me to upgrade)
Inspiron 5558 Intel® Core™ i3-4030U CPU @ 1.90GHz × 4 w/ 8Gb RAM and 1TB 5400 HD running Pop!_OS
Wife uses a 2017 MacBook Pro with 16Gb RAM/256 Gb SSD (it was mine, but I gave it to her and had this old laptop handed down to me by my Father). I like Mac OS, but primarily for their mobile platform. Windows I cannot stand, and Linux I prefer.
2014 Mac mini with 8Gb Ram/256 SSD (I upgraded the SSD which is the only thing that made it even usable). This sits in the garage where I drink my coffee and watch LearnLinux.tv
Apple TV (latest non-4K)
iPhone 8 (not looking forward to living with the notch some day)
Unused Raspberry Pi 3, Unused Pi Zero W, Arduino and assorted sensors (still have not learned to use them), Pi Zero W running Pi-hole (connected to router via Ethernet adapter)
Solutions I Have Considered
Attempt to install Linux or a Hypervisor on Mac mini and attach mass storage via a 4 slot Thunderbolt 2 enclosure from OWC (although they tell me they do not know if it will run under Linux). I could run a Plex server from this in any case.
Purchase a ThinkPad X1 Yoga and forgo the iPad. The problem here is that the gen 6 looks great, but only the gen 5 is listed as officially supported by Lenovo. The ThinkPad L13 Yoga also looks viable, but Lon.tv reviewed it and had trouble with the keyboard running from an Ubuntu live USB. System76 is null at present. No telling when they will get components with Dell, Lenovo, Apple, automotive, and all the other big players grabbing whatever silicone is available.
Keep using this clunker laptop, skip the iPad and buy something like the Dell PowerEdge T340 and see if I can get it to operate as an all-in-one home lab (Proxmox, TrueNAS, Plex, Nextcloud, and anything else I wanted to play with).
Skip the laptop, but a “micro pc a la tiny Lenovo pc” for fun time, and connect to it with a laptop dumb terminal (imagine my surprise to find this is not a thing…other than a few exceptions made for android phones, and expensive rack rigs for sys admins…I still cannot believe this is not a thing).
Skip the homelab fun, and reading on an iPad, and buy Dell Precision 7750 server for your lap and play around with Arduino and Raspberry Pi for the time being, maybe learn a little Pyton and C/C++ along the way.
Buy an Asustor NAS and iPad, keep crappy laptop.
I know this is not completely coherent. It probably makes little sense to most folks. Keep in mind this is an exercise in mental health as much as anything. I want some cool kit to keep my mind busy while my body degrades, but each compromise leaves me at a stalemate. Furthermore, I cannot afford to experiment and fail. If I drop hundreds on an OWC enclosure for the Mac mini and have to set up a Plex server on Mac Os there is not much fun in that…and if it should not work at all, I cannot just buy something else.
In the end, I may totally decide to simply stare at the television and read Dostoevsky waiting for an asteroid to plummet to earth and bring me sweet relief. Still, if you have any thoughts, opinions, or ideas I have not seen, feel free to chime in. Also feel free to correct any misconceptions or errors I may have included. Keep in mind my skill level is just barely above beginner. I can set up a Pi-hole, use ssh, etc., but only by following instructions.
Well, this might seem harsh, but if you alrady have RPi and Arduino bit’s but haven’t learned them yet, then I don’t think spening $$$ on more stuff is going to help?
You alrady have what you need for learning more I think. You can make your Inspiron nicer to use if you connect a larger 1080p monitor so it’s easier to read, and if you put it on an arm from a side table, you can use it in your recliner along with a little lap desk for mouse and keyboard. There’s also some really nice portable touch-screen monitors now that work nice and are coming down in price.
I never put Linux on any Mac hardware, but I guess it’s doable. Or you can put Docker on and run containers.
If you need a more powerful PC than that Inspiron, you can take a live Linux USB stick to a pawn shop and test and buy a used PC that will work nice. It doesn’t take a lot.
IDK what you mean by “not a thing” to connect a server to a laptop terminal? You can use SSH to connect to a terminal on the server, and you can also tunnel X Window apps over SSH to have them run on the server, but display on the laptop. Doing video over that isn’t great, though, but regular apps work fine.
We have a huge video library, but we don’t even bother with Plex, we just use VLC right from the network share or over DNLA if from an Android tablet (iPad, etc woudl also do that).
But there’s definitely not a need to spend $$$$ on stuff when you already have stuff to learn with that’s going unused.
Well, this might seem harsh, but if you alrady have RPi and Arduino bit’s but haven’t learned them yet, then I don’t think spening $$$ on more stuff is going to help?
Fair point, I started down this rabbit hole beginning on Arduino (and setting up the Pi-hole) and struggling with the low res screen, non-backlit keyboard. From there I stumbled upon this thing called homelab and was kind of pulled in.
If you need a more powerful PC than that Inspiron, you can take a live Linux USB stick to a pawn shop and test and buy a used PC that will work nice. It doesn’t take a lot.
That is a great idea.
IDK what you mean by “not a thing” to connect a server to a laptop terminal? You can use SSH to connect to a terminal on the server…
Sure, I just meant, an extremely low/no latency solution for connecting to a desktop would be cool. Imagine something like the lap docks they were selling for certain phones only in 15" with a backlit keyboard. It just seemed odd to me that there is not a market for such a thing. Most of the results found on The Google are for older discontinued devices with various limitations designed specifically for Android phones. I guess it makes sense though, it would be a niche.
But there’s definitely not a need to spend $$$$ on stuff when you already have stuff to learn with that’s going unused.
You may very well be correct which is why it starts with a dream setup. Heck, I have bookshelves full of books I could start reading again for that matter.
You can do all that with RPi; backlit keyboards are dirt cheap and so are 1080p screens big enough to read easily. That’s what I use for my alternate PC.
Those lap dock things work with RPi and PCs; look at ETA Prime’s channel on YouTube where he reviews some. The drawback with those is you have a small choice of screen sizes, and they’re a bit spendy.
@ArrowJ I wouldn’t spend a dime as I look at what you have already. Your current collection is better than most of my equipment. I hear you on being financially strapped, but I’m having tons of fun with my homelab, @jay channel content, and this forum. For your inspiration here is what I’m doing with little to no money paid out:
I also have eyesight that is degrading because of age, and I got as a Christmas gift last year a 32" 1080p Acer monitor that I hook up to a 17" HP Envy that had a broken screen that I got from a relative. I disconnected the laptop screen and just use the big monitor with an external keyboard and mouse. This is my primary home machine.
My home server that has Syncthing, and other projects that my teen son is working on like: Python Tornado App that displays Bing picture of the day and enables you to download the photo in two different resolutions; Discord bots he has written for the Discord server that he and his friends talk on while gaming on MineCraft; and a hosted instance of VS Code so he has access to a IDE wherever he is. My son’s school was getting ride of this old Dell Optiplex with an i3 and 2GB of RAM and 256GB hard drive. We upgraded it with a stick of 2GB to 4GB from another Dell Optiplex they were getting rid of.
I’m learning about web servers, static site generators, file permissions in Linux, firewalls, and ssh configuration, using a Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+ with 512MB of RAM that I got as a gift years ago, and this same Raspberry Pi is what my son first had to learn C++ programming on 3 years ago till he could scrap together gifts of money to buy a Dell Refurbished laptop for $225 and he also uses his desktop which was saved from recycling when the local library was getting rid of all their computers and it is a Dell Optiplex with 8GB of RAM and a 4 generation i5.
I’m planning to learn Docker on an old Toshiba laptop that I have installed Debian Stable and it has a first generation i3 with 4GB of RAM.
Considering what you have already, I would encourage you to see what you can do with what you have. If you have some money that you can safely spend in your budget consider making purchases that would make it easier to homelab from your recliner like was mentioned a new keyboard and monitor. Hopefully, this gave you some ideas, and this community can continue to encourage your life long learning. Have fun!
I apologize that I didn’t have a chance to read this topic in the amount of detail I’d prefer to, but keep your eye on companies that are liquidating or downsizing. Check out Estate Sale sites - it’s super rare for office closures to list there, but sometimes they do. But check around your area on classified listings, Facebook Marketplace, local business forums, etc. When a company downsizes, closes, or does a mass-upgrade, they practically give servers away. You’d be amazed. Look around periodically, and you can eventually check every box you want to check for dirt cheap.
