This one has only one SATA slot and only PCIe slot it has is for Wi-fi. So, probably not. Though maybe a couple ISOs with rtorrent wouldn't hurt.

Kinda want a low lower draw device to use as a server, ideally proxmox and just backup the whole VM image once its setup. But not sure how much I would really use. Very basic Apache/php, pihole, not sure if there is too much else.

Maybe factorio servers if I get into clusterIO stuff again.

My first stint as a sysadmin I did it all with nano.

8 years as the Linux SME for a Fortune 500, 8 years of being griefed for using nano.

I only started using vi when I moved into a world without nano.

Now I use vscode with vim keybinds.

I was probably just as efficient on nano and vi as I am now in vscode, the tools you have need to work for you.

I have a full size PC with a nvidia gt1030 for Jellyfin, I think it uses nvidias transcoding api when that is available.

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/transcoding/hardware-acceleration/

Looks like there are lots of options for hardware accel, so as long as you have one of them it should be fine?

I liked Zed a bit, but I ran into some bugs that made me switch back to my previous editor. I think I'll give it more of a shot in the future once it's a bit more mature. Otherwise, I enjoyed how responsive it felt, and having a single toggle to completely turn off AI features was nice.

For Kate, I view it as an alternative to Notepad++. It's quite a bit more powerful than N++, but to me feels like it fits in around the same place you described between simple text editor and advanced coding IDE. It's a great default for people who tend to modify a lot of config files.

I tried some things like that, not sure which ones specifically. The ones I tried were very fiddly though.

Interesting. I use Kate for the same type of projects.
Except that web development is something I hardly do, so I just need something simple.
Similarly, for the occasional Python script or some other language that I rarely use, I go with Kate.

For markdown, I prefer KWrite.

I mainly do C and C++ and for those I have KDevelop and Qt Creator.
For Rust, it would be KDevelop. I haven't looked into whether Qt Creator has any special Rust support.

Neat! It’s always good to remind oneself that outside of gaming and other similar taxing tasks older hardware gets you way further than people think.

Where I’m from sourcing parts is a hassle unless its current or last gen, so always good to see what others are doing to benchmark my efforts.

Some mini PCs have pcie cards so you can use a HBA card but if not there's adapters from m.2 to pcie.

I have something between a mini and normal desktop tower that has the half height PCIe. it has room internally for 2 drives but I bought a hard drive cage (like the ones that go inside a big desktop tower and just mounted it to the outside of the case.

So are you using planning storage via USB (for Linux ISOs), I've been doing it for 5+ years (on a NUC, so similar to yours) but it always feels a bit scary but I'm not sure what to get that isn't a real desktop tower (or a NAS case) but still has room for 2-4 HDDs ...

ackshually, you can beat that with vim 😎

I find Kate out of the box relatively equivalent to VS Codium with a few plugins, for example it provides ESLint and Prettier integrations and VI mode and other cool stuff. But there's a bug that makes it more TypeScript than JavaScript friendly, it doesn't identify output of typescript-language-server in JavaScript mode properly. So when I try writing in it code the way I prefer, with JSDoc annotations rather than switching to TypeScript completely, I get proper error messages but it doesn't highlight the error location right. There are also usability features I miss from Emacs or VS Codium, such as me typing a path to a new file and them automatically creating parent directories (in Kate, that gives an error). But the biggest problem is that Kate randomly corrupts my files, replacing the contents of one file with another.

Regarding divs, I prefer using plain JS, e.g. div({ id: "content" }, "It works!"), over either JSX or HTML templates, even if that's perceived as very very weird and I can only do that in personal non-commercial projects.

And like any good Microsoft product, you can’t trust it because they do absolutely no checking on the extensions, so a bunch of them are malware.

Honestly, you can't beat the amount of customization and addons you get with VScode. VSCodium is the non-telemtry version.

I've tried zed in the past and it wasn't bad. Though they seemed to have gone down the AI train ( agentic, built with, ... ). Do with that info what you will.

https://zed.dev/

Vscode is a popular one, and there's a foss version called vscodium ( https://vscodium.com/ ).

As far as free ones go that's all I know. When it comes to actual coding I prefer the jetbrains tools over the vscode ones. They have a few community versions of their tools ( like pycharm for python development), but I have no idea how limited they are.

I'm not sure what you mean by code editing. If its just editing a yaml file left and right or actually writing code.

Maybe an IDE is overkill for your scenario and you just need an editor with syntax highlighting.

I find it's an in between of something like nano vs VSCodium or Zed. It works well for editing single files + has features like syntax highlighting and such, but it is not as powerful as other code editors. And the editors I have mentioned are a step down again from full IDEs (which do their job very well with all the features you could want for debugging and whatnot)

Kate isn't a bad code editor, I think it does the job while being relatively lightweight compared to VSCodium and especially full IDEs. Zed is very quick so I've mostly replaced Kate (and VSCodium) with that, but Kate is an awesome piece of software too!

I tried to use it a few times for C++ but it wasn't intuitive for me and switched to NeoVum.

Good == you like it.

I don't like Kate personally. I use (and am addicted to) Sublime Text, but for an open source/free alternative I recommend Gram, or LiteXL. There's also one called Lapce that I thought was interesting, but I haven't looked into it in many years so idk if it's good yet.

For something more sublime-like, there's Cuda Text, but it's written in Pascal, an old/dying language, so it's at higher risk of abandonment because of a lack of contributors.

raspi was an option back then, but now it's inflated and almost any MiniPC is a better choice

I wouldn't call that a thin client, it's actually quite powerful for a home server IMO. :)

Actually that's impressive wattage for idle usage.

Immich is a good idea, though mine probably wouldn't run it well.

I run one of these thin clients:

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) x86_64
Host: HP ProDesk 400 G5 Desktop Mini
Kernel: Linux 6.12.113+deb13-amd64
Uptime: 3 days, 21 hours, 47 mins
Packages: 421 (dpkg)
Shell: zsh 5.9
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9500T (6) @ 3.70 GHz
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 630 @ 1.10 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: 2.37 GiB / 15.47 GiB (15%)

I bought it on ebay for ~£100. It idles between 3W - 5W and rarely goes over 20W.

I have jellyfin and immich on it.

For a "lean back" editor (as opposed to "lean in" like Vim or Emacs) that's menu and mouse friendly while still being lightweight overall, sure, why not? Kate is good for that, Geany also good. You might also look at Sublime (not open source) or a clone like CudaText (open source, bit more of a retro UI).

I wouldn't use those myself but my preferred posture is different. Use the glove that fits.

Isn't Intel Quicksync needed for Jellyfin transcoding? I got a mini PC for my server and specifically looked only for Intel. Got another mini PC for my desktop workstation and specifically looked for a Ryzen, that iGPU is doing a great job of running all the games I'm interested in.

Did you add the fs2ram stuff. Uses RAM for all the temp writes and stuff so SD card only deals with actual file storage access.

I mean, I think you have reason to trust SSDs more anyway. They're just physically designed for more wear and tear than SD cards are, even if I've never destroyed an SD card myself I'm aware of their lack of resilience compared to SSDs.

And yeah, I always dropped the extra money for Samsung Pro SD cards, maybe that's part of it, too.