st3ph3n

Hi, I'm running Linux Mint 21.3 with kernel 6.5.0-21 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T14 gen 2 with an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, and most relevant to my question, an Intel AX210 WiFi controller.

It connects just fine to 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, but about 90% of the time it cannot see my 6GHz network, which is operating on a separate SSID. Sometimes it apparently randomly will see the 6GHz network, and it will connect and work fine until the next time the computer goes to sleep, after which it will only see 2.4/5GHz networks again.

I've been messing around trying to troubleshoot it, which led me to installing wavemon, and I discovered that if I run wavemon with elevated permissions and make it scan for networks it will see the 6GHz network, and when that happens it immediately becomes available to choose through Cinnamon's GUI, and it will work fine again until the next time the computer sleeps. If I run wavemon again after waking from sleep and make it scan for networks, 6GHz functionality will work again.

Anyone know what's going on here? I should add that I am in the US where the 6GHz band is legal and should be enabled in the Intel iwlwifi driver. It's almost like something needs to happen to trigger the 6GHz radio into waking up or something.

Some background: I have a Synology NAS already with plenty of space on it. It runs my Jellyfin server in a docker container. I also have a Raspberry Pi 3b running Pihole.

I would like to get a mini PC to run Proxmox on, and migrate those workloads over to it, as well as use it to host any other fun projects that can be virtualized that catch my eye. It'll also be a useful learning experience as I would like to learn Proxmox to potentially broaden my skills at work, where we are an entirely VMware house, but the shit Broadcom has been pulling since taking over has put a shadow over all of that.

Anyway, I'm thinking I would like something along these lines:

• A relatively recent CPU with decent performance and low power consumption. I prefer AMD these days.
• Capacity for at least 32GB of RAM, but it doesn't have to have that much from the get-go.
• NVMe storage, 512GB or so.
• Two ethernet ports. 1Gb is acceptable, 2.5Gb would be nice, though.
• Low-ish costs. I don't need this thing to be able to play games or anything, just run my VMs at a decent clip without burning too much power.

Transcoding performance isn't a huge deal either as the Jellyfin server isn't shared with anyone outside the house, and my playback devices so far have been able to play pretty much anything I've thrown at them natively.

I think that I would plan to have the actual VMs stored on a share on the NAS rather than having them live directly on the PC.

What would you recommend?