I think this is amazing, though I don't really benefit from it, as my "home server"(aka old laptop)-GPU is too old. I wish it had a GCN+ GPU, I think (not verified, and I don't want to put in the time to check it) starting from GCN onward the architecture should be good enough to support any modern framework. Obviously not necessarily fast, but at least they could support it, as their ability to run compute kernels should enable them to at least emulate everything.

I wonder if there’s a lot of igpus still in use from this era. Feels like they’re probably over the line already.

I'll use the HD6310 in my laptop/server until it completely gives in! And I don't see that happening any time soon. It's not like chips just break.

I think this mostly benefits the somewhat later Kaveri etc. APUs that have a southern islands iGPU. Quite a few thin clients and laptops used those and they are still capable machines today for most non-gaming tasks.

GCN 1.0/1.1 graphics cards and APUs for transitioning them from the legacy Radeon driver over to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver

Far as I can figure out GCN 1.0 is southern islands and 1.1 is sea islands which are from 2012-2014, and HD7xxx and R[5-9] 2xx are the actual models.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon#Feature_overview seems to have a green block for amdgpu for those in "kernel 6.19+".

I wish they'd put the real stuff in the article. I hate hunting these things down.

Nice to hear there's new development. I wonder if there's a lot of igpus still in use from this era. Feels like they're probably over the line already.

Yeah, this was a nice surprise for the old thin client I use as an GUI access terminal for some servers. Not exactly a gaming machine, but some desktop tasks also benefit.

@poVoq see ya all there!

I'm new to the permacomputing concept, and just now hearing of Collapse OS. So thank you!

Anyone here in Canada? :-)

It was my first (and only, kiosk mode was not what i needed) foray into kiosk mode. I wanted a personalised r/o USB live system to use on public PCs, but used it too seldomly. Doesn't fedora also offer kiosk mode spins?

Thanks! I think I tried that once when I needed a really lightweight OS for a old laptop that was being picky about what Linux OSs it would run

I like Forth, but let us be honest, building stuff that last, that is efficient, that will not bitrot, that is built like a tank — you can do it with most of langauges!

Some projects (most popular one is CollapseOS) had reasons to pick Forth, but there are people with similar ethos who picked up C (check this game).

Welcome!

I am not sure but porteus might fit. https://www.porteus.org/

Collapse OS – Why Forth? – but I think most of the concatenative languages would be just as flexible, like Factor or Uxn

I would think C would work as long as you restrict it to a minimal base set: c89 -Wall -Werror -Wpedantic – or be brave and use -nostdlib – but keep in mind, C was a mainframe language, it only later got adopted for microcomputers and then microcontrollers

but aside from those, you are looking for a language that:

• doesn’t require a lot of resources (power, memory, or storage)
• can be bootstrapped relatively easily: sectorForth, milliForth, sectorLisp, uLisp, Uxn
• has enough existing code (and community) to learn from (and isn’t some grad project that was abandoned after post-graduation)
• but also doesn’t have so much code that it’s now synonymous with lake-burning scrapers fouling the waters
• can run in constrained environments: commodity microcontrollers, 8-bit processors
• can be compiled in those same constrained environments (being able to bootstrap it rather than needing a server farm to cross compile it)

Forget forth. You need to learn iptscrae! Script the stack!

Things are built to warranty. That take engineering. Most things are designed to fail, unfortunately.

Most warranties are 3-5 years. The government and businesses also depreciate technology (computers) on a 5 year basis.

Most technology follows a bathtub failure curve. Technology that outlasts 3-5 years is frequently a fluke and they try hard to minimize those.

Where is this statistic from? Surely depends on how it's used. I made a Raspberry-Pi powered kiosk to monitor cameras (very similar to OP's project in concept) for a friend 7+ years ago, it's still running.

Pisignage.com

I'll take that warning as a vote of confidence in my ability to configure systems for reliability! Honestly if we get to the point that systems are failing for hardware lifespan reasons we'll have exceeded my expectations and I'll issue some new ewaste. Fortunately the return policy at the free stuff swap shop is very generous.

Most ewaste isn't built for surviving over 3 to 5 years in operation.

Thanks, this is the second rec for cage so I'll try it out on a spare laptop and see how it goes

I don't have any recs, but as a frequent bus rider I love this idea and hope that lots of businesses take you up on it!

cage perhaps? I've never used cage, but I have used cagebreak and enjoyed my stay. If cage is an solid as cagebreak was, seems viable.

Thanks! That seems pretty straightforward!

I don't know about specific OS, but desktop-less Debian (or Alpine/postmarketOS for mobile) would be able to automatically log in and run fullscreen Chrome. Network/WiFi config would need to be done only once.

I built a kiosk-like weather display a while ago. Same idea applies, just with Chrome instead of Midori.

Glad we could be of help :)

Using it as an on-demand machine sounds like the perfect middle-ground! My jellyfin-server is also not running 24/7. Sometimes I think I could as well host jellyfin on the same machine that I'm watching/listening stuff on, as I'm the only one using it. But I started similar as you - I had a machine laying around, and wanted to do something with it.

When it comes to upgrading your machine, which I guess is still years in the future, as you asked for 0$ tips, I'd suggest first seeing how much "compute power" you actually need. People tend to oversize their machines (that also is a problem in data centers [or at least used to be, not sure about AI data centers]), so before you upgrade your machine, check how high its utilization is.

The hill I'm willing to die on is saying that people have too much RAM, and underestimate swap.

As for beginner-friendly Linux distributions, I'm not sure if I can help there, I feel like I'm still somewhat winging it. But there seem to be articles and wikis for everything, or someone somewhere had the same problem and others with more knowledge helped out.

In general, and I'm not sure if that's blasphemy, I'd say that most Linux distributions are interchangeable. They mostly only differ in the packaging system, the default desktop environment, and the preinstalled software. At most you get a different init system. (Please someone correct me if I'm wrong :D)

I sporadically tried Ubuntu ages ago, then "seriously" started with Manjaro (should have gone for Arch, in the long run Manjaro seems to be just causing problems), and then switched to Void Linux. Arch has a nice wiki that is useful independent of what distro you run. Void Linux also has a nice handbook.

I like the minimalistic approach of Void Linux, and I think it was recommended for old computers somewhere (any distro coming with xfce by default probably is recommended for that, but Void Linux really comes with basically no bloat). It requires some tinkering, as the base install is, well, pretty basic, but it's doable. I can play games on my desktop PC and have jellyfin running on it in a docker container on my old (now headless 💀) laptop. My recommendation for it would depend on how well you are versed in using Linux in general.

Otherwise, as I said, Linux distros are pretty interchangeable. Point at one that looks nice and shoot. If you don't like it, just try another one, reinstalling (at least when you don't have a lot of data stored on it yet) is not really a big deal.

Most BIOSes have a wake on alarm setting so you can very easilu set it to start every day at a specific time, run your jobs on boot, then your last job could be a shutdown command. No need for fancy wake on lan configuration.