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Comment on good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?

floridaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

I’d recommend an x86 board because as great as the RPI and similar can be, ARM just doesn’t have the same support for a lot of things you might want to self host. I personally like to spring for a used thinclient PC off of eBay, because they have about the same resources as a Raspberry Pi but on an x86 platform. With my thin clients I typically install Alpine but a really light Debian install could work as well, and then from there you can go about installing Docker etc for a little homelab. Even better, if you get lucky and get a couple of them you could mess around with clustering them and some light Kubernetes at home. I’ve got mine running PiHole and Unbound on Alpine to serve my whole house with DNS and it works great. I don’t think I’ve had hardly any downtime issues or anything of that sort.

TL;DR: try a couple cheap thin clients from eBay and you can run some light stuff on them for cheap.

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thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m seconding this. The Pi-supply-dry is getting better, but for similar money to a Pi4 you can get an ex-corporate 1L mini PC (I like the HP G1 800’s in a nice case, with engineered cooling, real storage, and easy memory upgrades.

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- peregus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  HP G1 800’s
  
  Have you measure the power consumption? How is it?
  
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  - thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    According to the readout on my UPS, about 10W idle
    
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uis@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

ARM just doesn’t have the same support for a lot of things you might want to self host

Like what? Person explicitly mentioned opensource software.

used thinclient PC

Usualy thay are cheap used, so it might work too

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- floridaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  ARM software support is just generally rough, yeah it’s good on RPi (and Mac) but on other boards it typically sucks, namely the cheaper boards OP would be buying. Here’s a couple software examples though, I’m a big docker user and just the other day I was trying to run I believe Mastodon and Lemmy on an ARM device but there was just no image for it. I’m sure I could build an image myself but for someone just getting into Homelabbing (like OP), x86 is the platform to use.
  
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  - uis@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    ARM software support is just generally rough, yeah it’s good on RPi (and Mac) but on other boards it typically sucks, namely the cheaper boards OP would be buying.
    
    Let’s see… Not counting Rock64 which is popular and AARCH, I also have chinese noname Espada E-726 TV Box on Allwinner A10, that(box) nobody knew about. Built bootloader, built kernel, installed system on SD card, it works.
    
    I’m a big docker user and just the other day I was trying to run I believe Mastodon and Lemmy on an ARM device but there was just no image for it.
    
    Image (It’s a GIF)
    
    I’m sure I could build an image myself but for someone just getting into Homelabbing (like OP), x86 is the platform to use.
    
    It is easier to not use Docker.
    
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