Update:
I want to thank everyone who weighed in in the comments. Based on your feedback, I’ve decided to hunt for good deals by searching for usff, mini pc, and/or thin client on used marketplaces. Looks like I should be able to nab something very serviceable for my purposes for around $50 no problem. Again, this is not for a production environment, just something I can throw on the corner of my desk and kinda forget that it’s there except when I want to follow some random tutorial on the internet.
For those who suggested I use VMs for this, I hear ya. However, I’d like to get as close as possible to the real deal (bare metal if you will) so that I don’t have to futz around w/ passing through graphics or networking or anything like that. Tbh configuring VMs properly is almost more difficult for me than just working on a spare bare metal unit.
Thanks again!
Original post:
In my self hosting journey, which is very much in its infancy mind you, many times I’ve longed for an extra machine I can use to try following tutorials on setting up samba shares, home assistant, what have you without having to worry about messing up my main machine and having to clean up after myself. As for acquiring such hardware on the cheap, I keep reading how the laptopocalypse w/ Windows 10 end of life will flood the markets w/ literally unlimited free e-waste bro!!! But my own experience hunting these EOL once in a lifetime deals has been more frownie face than happy face. Lots of $100+ listings and, idk that just seems like a lot to ask for something like that.
So just for fun I searched eBay for “raspberry pi” and came across this listing for a raspberry pi 3 w/ 1 GB RAM for $25. 1 GB of RAM seems like not very much, but then again I’m not trying to break the sound barrier here, I just want something that can sit on my desk basically unnoticed and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can switch to it from time to time, like whenever I want to try following a tutorial and not losing any sleep if I fail (and I fail often).
I’ve also kinda always had a little bit of envy from not being in the raspberry pi club, so this is my shot at getting into the club. I think I’m going to spring for this one, so my question for the audience is, but like honestly am I about to piss $25 down the drain? Would this be good enough for my purposes or is the 1 GB of RAM going to bottleneck me like a boss?
Sorry for the run on sentences, my brain’s tired today.
$25 is too much for a used 1gb pi 3. A new pi 5 with 1gb is $45 and way better. But, most ppl start with a vps.
No.
Unless there’s something about the RPi that you really want - GPIO, say - it’s not a good choice, especially not the 1GB model you mentioned. Virtually any used desktop or laptop PC from the last fifteen years will be more useful; if you’ve not done so already, search EBay for “USFF”. Those are desktop PCs the size of paperback books. Businesses love them and have them in fleets which means they tend to get cycled out naturally after a few years; the marketplace is full of them and can be had for €30 and up. Unlike a RPi 3, they usually come with storage included (and a proper SSD/HD rather than an SD card), a good quality power supply, plenty of I/O and, if course, a nice solid protective case.
Example: https://ebay.us/m/TxL4yR
Slap PROXMOX on that and you’ll have the seed of a solid home lab. With 8GB RAM you’ll have enough to run VMs for OpenWRT, Home Assistant, Yuno Host, and still have enough resources left over for your Debian tinkering box. Plus, by using PROXMOX you do away with the need for a KVM since you can either SSH into the VM or use PROXMOX’s web UI to access the console and use a GUI if that’s more your speed.
Dang I didn’t know they got that cheap.
Thanks for the search advice.
Don’t look online, ask friends and family if someone has an old laptop you can get for free. Very likely someone does, especially if you are ok with a bad battery and/or a broken screen.
A RPi3 can work, but it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86.
Yes, this is one of the few real valid arguments against something like a pi 3. Outside architecture issues they are fantastic to learn on.
The architecture may also be problem, when you want to use Containers (Docker, Podman). Some images are not available for all architectures.
The 3B has a 64bit ArmV8 CPU, there is a better support.I have some Odroid devices with 32bit ArmV7 CPU, where often images are not available for.
https://wiki.geekworm.com/Raspberry_Pi_3_Model_BWow, armv7 is definitely back there in terms of support. One of the more known v7 devices was the nexus 7, released in 2012.
Definitely, though that can also be an issue with older x86 cores. Or, hell newer ones with non heterogeneous cores. Though that at least is getting better on both architectures.
it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86
Hmm, this is just enough to give me pause. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to think on this some more and maybe do a little more research.
I can confirm the ARM issue, I’m a newbie and I recently set up a NAS on an RPi 5.
Definitely take a look at what you’re looking to host and what it supports. Support for raspberry Pi and their Debian based pi OS is surprisingly widespread and robust. Not always first-party top-level support robust, but surprisingly adequate for a $35, $50 SBC.
Worst case scenario is still a solid introduction to open source software. Downloading, compiling, installing, et cetera. Some of my earliest projects on the pi involved that. Using the camera module along with the video for Linux subsystem, which wasn’t included or packaged under Raspian at the time at least. Go git project. Make, make install, and party
eBay has plenty of x86/x64 computers that don’t technically support Windows 11. An old Lenovo desktop/sff with a 7th gen i7 could be a pretty cheap entry point. 8th Gen and up will be more expensive since they can still run windows 11
Hell my home server is a i7 4700. It’s a solid experience, though it is missing a few nice to haves these days. I have three Linux desktops in the house, i7 6700. One dell one lenovo and one HP. The Dell and Lenovo I have no need or desire to replace them for the little amount of gaming, etc. I do. They have decent graphics cards since I do 3D modeling. RX 580 and NV 1050.
The HP, I don’t know if there’s legitimate hardware failing somewhere on it, or if it’s just HP suckage. I have a little power HP Elite Book with an AMD processor and APU on it, and that thing is awesome. But this little business tower was struggling with Windows 10 before they killed it off. It’s better with Linux, but it’s still a shadow of the other two similarly-spect systems. Who knows.
When going for older hardware, though, my biggest recommendation is to don’t get the low end. Go for something higher. A similarly specced i7 Perfectly offer a significant performance boost over the i5. If someone gave me an i3 I could find a use for it. But I would never buy one.
Can confirm this. I experienced this on my Pi3 recently with a VPN. I mean, it wasn’t the end of the world. Just that the specific docker container I wanted to use wasn’t compatible because of ARM so I had to go with a different one.
It could be bad for specific things that are more obscure. But I use my Pi for PiHole adblocking and VPN and that’s it. My other stuff lives on another machine and the Pi is set up for redundancy and it’s more reliable if power outages happen since power in means power on by default.
If you can get one for cheap and just want it for the same reason, could be alright.
Get a cheap mini PC instead.
Rpis are great for always on things with low power use but not if you have many low power use things. But you would really be feeling that 1GB of ram, and microSDs kind of suck to run off of. I would honestly save the $25 and put it toward one of the $100 tiny/mini/micros.
I would not steer you away from an RPI if you don’t have one, they are very useful and fun, but if you’re looking for learning about self hosting, you’re probably going to end up getting something more powerful anyway
You’re not going to be able to do much self hosting with 1GB of ram.
1GB is probably enough to run one basic service without a GUI. If you want anything more than that you’re going to probably end up running out of RAM and hitting the SWAP file–grinding everything to a snail’s pace. Useful projects here might be to add smarts to something dumb around the house or making an old printer support wireless printing via cups.
Like others have said if you want to tinker, a virtual machine via virtualbox or VMware is free for your use case.
If you strongly prefer hardware, an old PC will probably be cheap or free.
If you really want a pi you’ll probably have to look for something that has at minimum 4Gb (which will be easy to outgrow), recommending 8GB+. Note that raspberry pi’s run best on the official power plug as a USB-a to micro/c won’t provide enough power to be stable and will cause weird issues or crash the pi under heavier loads or when drawing power from the pins.
1gb ram is crap. Hardware capabilities aside it’s just not enough to run anything usable for real hosting. Get an old office machine for 50-100 with 8gb or more of memory and it will do infinitely better.
I learned how to Linux on a Raspberry Pi. That is, in fact, what they’re for. I’ve got one (a Pi 2) that sits on my LAN with a hard drive attached as one part of my backup solution.
Yes
As others have said, 1 GB RAM isn’t enough. It also isn’t a good deal. You can get old NUCs for $30-40 with 8 GB.
As long as you don’t use a DE on it, a pi3 is great for experimenting with server software. I still use my 3b for plenty of things.
Yes that, don’t run a full desktop. Run the raspian light image.
My homelab was once 10 raspberry pis all networked up as a big mess.
Oh, and on the “fail often” thing…
Get a basic/old/free pc/laptop and install Proxmox on it.
Loads of tutorials out there, but the basic installer will get you to a “I’m learning” stage.Create a VM, install Debian, play around.
Then: create a new VM, install Debian, create a snapshot, play around until it does what you want, restore the snapshot, do the steps that got you from vanilla to what you want. Create snapshots along the way as checkpoints. Snapshot, tinker, restore snapshot, advance.Proxmox is amazing for learning VMs and server things
Sure, I use them from time to time in my lab to spin up test runs. I also have a cheap VPS ($25/year) that I do the same on. You could also use VMWare Workstation Pro (free) or Oracle Virtual Box (free), on your desktop/laptop, to spin up a Ubuntu or other server, and test to your heart’s content. I would think the 1 gb spec on the RPi 3 might limit you somewhat on what you could test run, but I have surprised myself as to what I can jam into an RPi 3. PiMyLifeUP has a ton of tutorials for the RPi. Might want to take a glance to see what’s possible, but, for an initial investment of $25 seems like a doable opportunity.
Raspberry pis are an easy intro to actually using computers (instead of using something like windows).
Raspbian is great (based on Debian) and there is a HUGE community for it.So yeh, it’s a great started for $25, as long as you have a PSU and SD Card. And an hdmi cable + monitor + keyboard at your disposal (and a mouse if you are installing a desktop environment (IE something like windows, whereas headless is a full screen CLI).
And don’t get your hopes up for a windows replacement.But… Why not run a Virtual Machine? If you have a windows machine, run VirtualBox, create a VM and install Debian on it?
That’s free. You can tinker and play.
And the only thing you are missing from an actual raspberry pi is that it isn’t a standalone device (IE your desktop has to be on for it to be running), and it doesn’t have GPIO (ie hardware pins. And if this is your goal, there are other ways).If you really really want a computer that is on all the time running Linux (Debian, a derivative (like raspbian) or some other distro) - aka a server - then there are plenty of other options where the only drawback is lack of GPIO (which, in my experience, is rarely a drawback).
And that is literally any computer you can get your hands on. Because the raspberry pi trades A LOT for its form factor, the ethernet speed is limited, the bus speed is limited (impacting USB and ethernet (and ram?)), the SD card is slower and will fail faster than any HDD/SSD. The benefit is the GPIO, the very low power draw, and the form factor - rarely actually a benefit.I’d say, play around with some virtual box VMs. See what you want, other than Fear Of Missing Out (things like PiHole? They run on Debian, or even in a docker container). Then see if you actually want a home server, and what you want to run on it.
It’s likely you won’t want a raspberry pi, but a $150 mini pc that can actually do what you want.
