dingdongitsabear

I have acknowledged that they're that, but that's not what OP asked for - they asked for a cheap setup (which the minis ain't) and they intend to run a servarr instance, which implies large storage and those are both difficult and not cheap to cram into said minis.

I don't understand the fascination of other commenters with mini-PCs, as the mini-ness was mentioned nowhere in the OP.

any used and decomissioned old office PC, any i5/i7 is way more powerful than you'll need for that setup. you get everything you need right in the box and you can cram it full with cheap RAM and hard disks. you get to repurpose something that's useless as a desktop workstation and not buy more future e-waste.

yes, the mini-PCs and the Rpis are more power efficient, but the operating costs of a $30-50 PC don't come close to the price of buying one of these mini-things, not to mention - figuring out how to run large hard disks with it.

just watched a video where the dev explains LG; this is for a Windows VM that allows GPU pass-through, or am I missing something? when you say "host" and "client", you're referring to two physical devices or how does that work in your case?

I have two physical machines (both running linux, Fedora 40 on the desktop and Debian 12 on the laptop) connected to the same monitor, keyboard and mouse and I need to alternate between them.

edit: aha, the LG site refers to KVM as kernel-virtual-machine, whereas I'm talking about KVM as in keyboard-video-mouse; completely different things, maybe I should amend the post's title.

Aside from the god-awful installer (which they’re replacing), and the ball ache of installing media codecs, it’s an amazing distro.

yeah, so I got AMD graphics and it was news to me that from now till the end of days, you're supposed to run dnf up thusly:

sudo dnf up -x mesa-va-drivers

that suffix prevents fedora's shitty mesa from interfering with your cool mesa from rpmfusion, even though you swapped shitty-mesa with cool-mesa, as instructed. apparently, they started forcing this shit recently, can't remember ever having to do this, from F35 on up to F39.

this feels like a new take on wrestling Ubuntu and its snap monstrosity, you ripped shit out and thought you were fine. not so, we want shit done to your computer, even though you're like against it but you don't really mean it, right? man, gtfo with that bullshit, go break a Gnome extension or something and leave this shit be!

that's mentioned NOWHERE - not in the rpmfusion howto's, not in askfedora/fedora magazine (but there are swaths of jerkoffs going "well that's a risk when using 3rd party shit"), nor any step-by-step articles I looked at, I accidentally found it buried in a 3rd level comment of some rando reddit discussion.

edit: the installer sucks big fat elephant dick.

I'm on 6.8.5. lscpu | grep -i cppc comes up empty, so I guess I need to enable it in BIOS setup or add some kernel switches.

did the upgrade! aside from a little scare* everything worked out beautifully! it sleeps and wakes without issues and the XMP1-3600 profile works. ran a bit of geekbench6, that used to crash on the old CPU - no such thing here; watching the clock speeds reach 4.4 GHz was surreal.

a bunch of new options in the setup, PBO, overclock, etc. I'll leave them be for now.

also, just checked, I don't have the amd-pstate driver active, I'm still on acpi-cpufreq. I'll tackle that one of these days if everything works fine.

• • on first power on, there was only the "American Megatrends" logo and no other text, it just stood there. after a quick ddg, found the solution in a reddit thread, you're supposed to press "Y" there and then commences a series of reboots (5-6 or so, didn't count). after that's done with, you're greeted with your normal POST screen. enter the setup, load "Optimized Defaults", activate XMP1, turn off extraneous devices (serial, SATA ports).

thanks for taking the time to reply. can you expand on the issues I mentioned, did you have to change those BIOS settings and does suspend/resume work? what's your RAM speed?

currently Fedora 40, Plasma. upgraded in place from F35 onwards.

I am unfamiliar with the current state, my experiences are from a couple of years ago. I had problems with ubuntu-specific installs, ppas and the like, stuff broke easily on upgrades; that's possibly not an issue anymore on account of flatpaks.

my biggest turnoff was that the default apps had their distinct look whereas 3rd party apps looked different. add to this the occasional QT app and the cacophony was too much to bear.

granted, but they are inextricably linked and you have to consider the software that does or doesn't allow you to utilise said hardware.

like, I've waited years for kernel devs to catch up to the proprietary hardware in my 2-in-1, namely the drivers for the ipu3 cameras. they are now obsolete and the focus is on ipu6 models. kinda important if you want this to be your main device.

and as to software, it's important to note that the touch-friendliness was an afterthought, so it isn't propagated through the system. like, in Gnome's own system settings app, you can't initiate dropdowns with touch! that's a pretty significant UI element that's been around since forever. another common stumbling block is initiating "right-clicks" on elements, by long-pressing stuff; sometimes it works, other times not. the on-screen keyboard usually appears when an input is focused, but it doesn't often enough that it's annoying.

speaking of, Gnome's OSK is only somewhat usable (and less so if you're on a non-US layout). if you're used to Android or iOS keyboards, it's pretty basic. however bad that is, Plasma's maalit keyboard makes Gnome's look like advanced alien tech, it's broken on so many levels you're better off disabling it. I didn't follow development in the past year or so, but one default "feature" of Gnome OSK was that it remembers everything you type - that includes passwords! - and helpfully offers them on the suggestion strip, with no way of turning it off!

obviously, the OSKs don't work if you need to unlock your disk on boot and I'm not sure they work on the login/lock screen; someone please correct me if I'm misremembering.

OK, screw OSKs, you're gonna use the cover keyboard. except, it's prone to just not work half the time. then you rip it apart (pardon, you disconnect it) and attach it again to have it working, maybe.

you're used to reading stuff, books, comics, whathaveyous, for hours. well, those screens aren't super power-efficient and the batteries aren't humongous either. plus, that thing is heavy and thick (easily twice my Samsung Tab) so maybe don't hold it up ABOVE YOUR FACE WHILE LYING DOWN - ask me how I know! speaking of screens, they aren't the greatest - try scroll-flinging a long page and watch this stuttering-flashing mess; you're gonna need new eyes if you keep this up.

I tried to make one work as a 3-in-1 solution. why have a desktop, a laptop, and tablet when I can have a single device and forego the constant copying and syncing and stuff. semi-decent specs, i5, 16 GB, 500 GB NVMe more than enough for my needs, so I got me a USB-C Dock, attached a huge 4K monitor, LAN, sound, mechanical keyboard, mouse... when I'm needed in the field, just detach it and off I go with all my shit on the drive AND I got a free iPad out of the deal, I just have to marvel at how smart I am!

yeah, nah. bottom line, they are bad as desktop replacement (throttled all over the place on account of anaemic cooling + whiny fan holler), bad as a laptop (on account of the kickstand, you hafta use it on a desk only, plus the keyboard is pretty bad and so is the tiny touchpad) and very bad as tablet (for reasons galore, some mentioned above).

so, like I said, as a fun project to play with - by all means, it's super fun trying out different OSs/apps (I haven't touched on Waydroid, Android x86, FydeOS, note-taking apps, etc.) but, as a daily driver, one that your livelihood and/or education depends on - hard pass.

kinda like trillian in the olden days... not sure all them proprietary services are gonna let 'em use their platforms though.

what they said. surfaces are serviceable to a degree (battery and SSD, screen replacement) even though they're glued shut, but in the sense "this is a fun project to do at a leisurely pace", not "I got shit to do with it tomorrow, clock is ticking".

Dells are way more serviceable, they got screws and easily accessible components instead of cement glue from hell. if you're going that way, make sure the camera sensors are supported, ipu3/6 camera support is spotty.