For the OS side a few ways.
For home folder side of things a dotfile manager, cloud services, and file sync tool will take care of most things. I use chezmoi for dotfiles & nextcloud for file syncing. Firefox is only cloud synced service I still use for now. I have yet to find any decent sources of information on dotfiles so gonna be stuck going through those stupid things to figure out what you want to sync.
Yep, 8th gen (Coffee Lake) saw a lot of improvements in Intel Quick Sync, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding
I have never seen a capture device with USB interface have any kind of usable latency, you'll want one with PCI Express interface.
Elgato makes a capture card with PCI Express interface, I had a friend who used one to play all of his consoles on big virtual screen in VR. I tried out Mario Kart 8 for the Switch and it played great.
The OS was also very limited with focus on Linux ports of games which there were not very many at the time. Proton wasn't a thing yet. I bought two of them, one for myself and one for my brother. I tested it out & it was neat but wiped both to do clean installs of Windows 7 so could play the games we wanted.
Nothing to stop running podman containers with full root access by creating & running them as root, you run them as whatever user you want. I've done it to troubleshoot containers on more than one occasion, usually when I want to play with VPN or privileged ports but too lazy to do it proper. The end goal for a lot of ppl, including myself, is to run as many things as non-root as possible. Why? Best practices around security have you give a service the minimal access & resources it needs to do it's tasks. Some people allow traffic from the internet to their containers & they probably feel a little bit safer running those programs as non-root since it can create an extra layer that may need to be broken to fully compromise a system.
Sounds like the drives are combined with RAID 5. Could be hardware RAID card or software RAID as part of the BIOS. Server model number can be used to search for administrator manual and may have more info there. If it's hardware RAID card then try to find the model number & search for it's manual. If it's software raid at the BIOS level then motherboard/server manual will cover it. Should be some messages and prompts during boot related to it. Terms to look for 'RAID', 'storage controller', 'Perc', 'LSI'.
Intel Quick Sync video saw a lot of improvements on 8th gen & since it's all so old the pricing differences between 7th & 8th gen are going to be negligible.
Yes, my order status has been at preparing to ship for awhile now. I been wanting a good Linux tablet to replace aging iPad and hoping this works well enough for me. I'll try to remember to update post on how I like it when it does arrive.
Unfortunately I can't help with boot speed. Cold boot on enterprise servers tends to be on the slower side even for latest servers at my work across all major vendors. For rebooting the newer ones are faster but the older ones (around same age as R620) are slow to boot no matter what.
For the firmware that system is end of support life so once they are caught up to latest you are done, just an FYI. Do you have a single or multiple Dell servers?
I don't have much experience with single server environments so I'd recommend research & verify everything before attempting to install any firmware. Dell OpenManage Server Administrator looks like it could be helpful. Failing that you can use the iDRAC web interface for some of the firmware installs. You'll need to research to learn which ones can be installed there & the proper order to do them. If your iDRAC has the fancy remote console & media features available you could use those features to handle the rest of the firmware updates as well as install any OS you want on it. If it doesn't and have some budget available then I'd say look on eBay (or equivalent) for iDRAC Enterprise card and license if needed.
If you have multiple Dell servers I would recommend using the OpenManage Enterprise virtual appliance they make. It's free and makes firmware updates on Dell servers quick and easy. It can also handle installing firmware in the correct order when necessary. It will need access to the iDRAC interface.
I suggest to read up on the way Wake On Lan works, it's pretty neat. it has to send a packet to a local broadcast address. I don't think that can route over the internet so you need some device to send the packet from on the network or over a VPN connection.
For the KVM part, that model server should have some form of remote control. I think they called it the Integrated Management Module (IMM) on those things. The IMM is running as long as the server has power, it's a tiny independent system. They have various licenses/feature sets but at minimum it should get you a web interface to see status of the server as well as power it on & off. It may also have remote console and media options but those are add-on costs so not everybody buys them. The default login information should be somewhere on the chassis unless it was removed or got lost. The old defaults used to be username all uppercase 'USERID' with password exactly 'PASSW0RD' with a zero instead of the letter O. I don't recall when they changed to newer methods but it's worth a try.
Would love a new Steam Machine and could actually be good this time. Proton didn't exist when they released the original Steam Machines which limited you to linux ports of games. I had bought two but wiped & did clean installs of Windows 7 so we could play all the games wanted to.
Before Proton, gaming on linux relied on native ports or WINE. Native ports were rare & not always better. WINE took some learning to make work well but I dunno, never got any good at it.
The container method used should be whatever you are more familiar with or prefer. They both have their own quirks, pros, & cons.
SELinux - If you don't want to deal with SELinux then set it to permissive mode. If you want to keep in enforcing mode you need to create the appropriate policies, https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/using_selinux/configuring-selinux-for-applications-and-services-with-non-standard-configurations_using-selinux
Firewall - If you don't want it's protection then look up instructions to stop & disable it on your distro.
Port forwarding - From linux container side you either need to specify host networking or the ports you want to allow through, there is no avoiding that if it needs to be network accessible. If you want it internet accessible then you need to setup port forwarding on your router.
Have you looked into something like yunohost? It may be the kind of thing you're looking for.
I swapped out delta fan a few months after release, agree fairly straightforward. Upgraded the nvme ssd to 1tb sometime before replacing with OLED model.
EndeavourOS on desktop and laptop side of things.
I've had good luck with refurbished Dell laptops. My primary laptop is a refurbished Dell Latitude 11" 3120. Bought it for ~$250 at beginning of this year and currently have Fedora on it. It's not very powerful. I use it primarily to browse the web, watch movies/tv, and vnc/ssh to my other systems. Can last about 5-6 hours streaming video from jellyfin at 50% brightness, other stuff barely uses any power and can stretch out to 9-10 hours if I set display brightness even lower.
I've always bought Windows laptops then put linux on them so I'm used to verifying that tools such as TLP are installed, configured, enabled, and working. There is too much variety with laptops for all of them to be handled automatically unfortunately so I always verify it. If a laptop came with Linux pre-installed then it might be good to go ootb but I'd still verify.
Was it the official container image or 3rd party? Whichever it was, they should get notified so that init script can get fixed to prevent similar happening to others.
For steamdeck on the couch something like the xreal or rokid would be better. Some people have been able to make VR work with steamdeck with bad performance but they only tried VR games so don't know how it would be with regular games.
I bought a pair when they were still going by NReal name and they worked well with steam deck and my laptop. Battery life would last longer with only the glasses on. I didn't like always having to wear contacts so picked up a pair of Rokid's glasses too. Those have built in diopters and have been working well.
Quick way to check if a program is using hardware video acceleration is with a gpu top utility.
Intel - intel_gpu_top
Nvidia - nvidia-smi / nvtop
AMD - radeontop / nvtop / amdgpu_top (just did quick search, don't have any AMD powered on to verify)
Free and centrally managed, not aware of any but definitely interested in something like that too.
My current setup has Proxmox backing up all LXC and VMs to Synology NAS then the Synology NAS backing up to Backblaze. Both run nightly. Using the built-in backup utility on Proxmox VE pointed at CIFS share on the Synology NAS.
Synology does have a software backup client available but I have never used it. For my desktops & laptops, they are easily reinstalled+reconfigured, I just make sure the data I care about is stored or synchronized to my NAS or the cloud. Nextcloud for files, Firefox sync for history+bookmarks, bitwarden client+vaultwarden for passwords, chezmoi for some dotfiles on some linux systems.
Another benefit to LXC is you can map devices, including GPU, to multiple LXC while keeping them accessible to the host. For my home setup I currently have 3 LXC with access to the iGPU, 1 for jellyfin+caddy via podman nested, 1 for moonfire-nvr via podman nested, and been trying to use 1 to figure out hardware transcoding with owncast through multiple install methods but no luck so far. I've also been playing with mapping rtl-sdr v3 devices, zigbee stick, zwave stick, and coral usb for a variety of projects lately.
edit: I forgot to answer the question and went straight to ranting, lol. LXC is like a bare-metal VM. You can install & run multiple things on them like a normal VM including podman or docker.
You can self-host ACME server which lets you use certbot to do automatic renewals even for private, internal only certs. I don't know if it would work with NPM. I plan to test that out at some point in the future but my current setup works & I'm not ready to break it for a maybe yet :P
They changed quite a few things between DSM 6 & 7 and unfortunately one of them broke easy use of those USB sticks. I didn't want to mess with the internal config of the Synology NAS too much so used the VM approach with the HA image and mapped the USB stick to it.
Refunds came about because of EU laws. Those flash sales would have resulted in a bunch of refunds so they stopped doing them at the same time. They actively encouraged (and still do) people to refund & rebuy for cheaper at any time whether any steam sale is involved or not as long as within the refund terms.
Personally, I only miss the mini games they had during those sales but I hated the flash sales themselves. Had to waste time researching when the games wanted were going to be the cheapest during the flash sale. Then had to hope it was during some free point of the day, notification/alarm worked, or that didn't forget to create the notification/alarm. Then had to hope the store wasn't overloaded because everyone else was also trying to get in on time limited sales.
VMs in ESXi have the same behavior when iSCSI connection is lost then restored later. Windows with iSCSI drive mounts shows the same behavior in that scenario too.
UPS would be a great addition no matter what option you choose.
Sounds like bridge mode is needed for the vm's network interface in virt.
I would say proxmox ve is easier to start with.
They still build recommendations even if you're not logged in, you can see them in the sidebar after you load a video. Imo they only removed them from the homepage to try convincing people to log in or create account, it's all about increasing user numbers, ad engagement, and data collection these days.
Is MariaDB on spinning disk or ssd?
I initially set up Nextcloud with MariaDB on spinning disk but it was slow even completely empty. I moved that container to ssd & performance was a lot better. The web UI may still have some slow loading parts but I can't say for sure since rarely use it. Caldav+carddav+Nextcloud client are how I usually interact with it.
Self-host your own ACME server. Then you can use certbot pointed there.
These instructions are old so not sure if newer/better ways, https://blog.sean-wright.com/self-host-acme-server/
Another thing to remember is the client needs to support decoding the video in hardware or have enough CPU to handle it in software. I have intel i7 (3rd gen) with no hardware HEVC/x265 support but it has enough CPU to power through.
Sometimes I'll lower resolution or quality just so a game loads quicker.
This project, https://neko.m1k1o.net/#/getting-started/examples , looks like a good base to try running regular GUI apps via docker & web.
edit: and here's the git with Dockerfiles, https://github.com/m1k1o/neko-apps
My last NAS & ESXi box were 12 years old when I retired them. I had thought about sticking with used enterprise gear but wanted a break to be a little lazy for a couple years. Storage is on Synology (DS1520+) and Proxmox runs on Asus PN63-S1 mini PC. Hyper Backup was primary reason I chose Synology (always been lazy about off-site backups) and docker feature has come in handy for things like secondary pihole & DNS. LXC with docker or podman have been able to cover majority of my needs in proxmox but still have Home Assistant & Unifi Network Controller on their own VMs. Home Assistant I have zero plans to move. Unifi I eventually plan to move over to docker but it works for now, albeit on an older version. Really need to up my documentation & diagram game, it's all a huge mess, lol.
Future plans would love to have closet full of used enterprise servers running proxmox with all flash ceph storage backend then can do whatever NAS distro I want as a VM. My budget is focused elsewhere for next year or two unfortunately so gonna be awhile unless something breaks.
Always like to hear about other setups as I am constantly re-thinking my own.
Most standalone APs can be plugged into the router and immediately start working, they'll forward along DHCP requests. You can turn off your router's wifi after they have been configured. For Unifi APs you only need the controller running when you want to manage/update the APs and for stats collection, I only power mine up to check for new firmware updates once a month. Can disable Unifi analytics/telemetry with a config file option too but no way to do it via web UI.
For VLANs you will need to configure the VLANs on Opnsense and the APs. Unifi lets you specify the mgmt VLAN and VLAN per SSID. For my setup I have vlan 5 for work ssid, 10 for mobile devices, 15 for IoT and other things that don't need internet, and 20 for a couple temporary & guest SSIDs.
The Unifi APs are alright but the controller software itself is fairly limited for stats/data, still better than other standard consumer APs I've used though. I've been wanting to try out Grandstream Wifi APs for replacement as most models include a built-in controller capable of managing more than enough APs for my home uses and still have option of standalone controller or cloud managed but it's not priority as my current APs still receive firmware updates,
I have public wildcard DNS entry (*.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com) on Cloudflare on my primary domain that resolves to 192.168.10.120 (my Caddy host)
Caddyfile
{
email EMAILREMOVED@gmail.com
acme_dns cloudflare TOKENGOESHERE
}
portal.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com {
reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8081
}
speedtest.REMOVEDDOMAIN.com {
reverse_proxy 192.168.10.125:8181
}
My current workaround for that is adding whatever I want to shuffle into a playlist. I have one with some sci-fi shows in it that I regularly use. Smart collections is my most missed feature from Plex.
edit: nvm, doesn't sound like it would help your use case, read through it too quick first time round
If router supports it, a static route via connected machine with IP forwarding enabled might work. OpenWrt has packages for things like tailscale and zerotier so could do it without an extra machine too.
I started with Slackware around 1997 because I needed a free C compiler plus all I had were junk, hand-me-down computers. Stopped programming & using linux around 2000 and had switched back to Windows on a newly built, decent computer. From about 2000 until about 2016 I rarely used linux besides a couple routers. Raspberry pi 3 came out with built-in wifi & my dislike of Windows 10 got me back into linux for more use cases. Valve's work on proton finally made it so I could switch to linux for most gaming & my Windows usage dropped to almost nothing. Currently using Manjaro on primary desktop and Fedora 38 on tablet with mix of distros in LXC & VMs on mini-PC w/ Proxmox VE & Synology NAS. SteamVR on linux been getting decent amount of work on it lately so once it gets stable I'll have one less reason to need Windows.
That varies depending on the computer/motherboard manufacturer and model. The manual may reference that feature but if not can go into BIOS/UEFI setup menu then browse through looking to see if there is any option to enable it. Also I've only used it with built-in NICs so not sure if it's an option with add-on NIC.
I use Caddy with the Cloudflare DNS plugin for Let's Encrypt DNS based challenges, should work for wildcard too but only have a couple subdomains so never tried to do that. My DNS entries are public but point at private IP ranges, e.g. nc.PRIVATEDOMAIN.COM resolves to 192.168.1.20 where Caddy sends the traffic to my Nextcloud docker
Software config optimizations help a little bit but my biggest improvement was moving the DB to SSD. Spinning disks are great for capacity but not for DB performance. Random I/O is a big factor for them and those drives drop in performance so fast for that type of I/O due to physically spinning media.
I started out using Owncloud and later switched to Nextcloud once that fork was stable. For all my uses it has always needed beefy hardware to run well but I definitely have way more junk files in synced folders than I should & rarely clean things up.