Try Lutris - it integrates with the GOG store so will fetch and install the games from there, with proper scripts to configure Wine so that the game just works with no extra configuration (i.e. with works like the Steam launcher does for the Steam store).
I believe Heroic Launcher does the same, but I’ve just settled down to use Lutris and Steam so never go around to test Heroic.
If the post was about themselves, saying “I am queer” is fine IMHO (as would’ve been to say “I am straight” or imply it for example by saying “I’m a man” and “I have a wife”) as that’s about that person so sharing what they feel defines them as person is the whole point and restricting mentions of one’s sexual orientation there is at best idiotic.
Had it been on a post about something Canonical or Ubuntu, in my view mentioning one’s sexual orientation would probably not have been appropriate, mainly because it would be raising an irrelevant and (sadly, in the present day) ideologically charged subject, same as it would be inappropriate to mentioning one’s political allegiance in the same context.
All in all I hope the moderator who made that mistaken moderation action has been taught the difference and been alerted to how their own internal biases are leaking into the professional sphere, which they shouldn’t.
I see, with your clarification that does make more sense.
Frankly I would’ve rather have avoided Intel because, well, they’re Intel, but from what I saw when I looked around, the N100 was an x86 designed for that kind of use, had far more computing power than the dissapointing cheap ARM based Android TV boxes I had tried before (I’ve been using TV Boxes for since well before they were common and the last one was so old that it couldn’t handle newer media anymore, so I started looking around and first tried replacing with with a cheap Android TV box) and I could get a Mini-PC for roughly the same price as a good Android TV box for making my own thing fully under my control (i.e. Linux with my chosen media player and services, rather than a closed Android riddled with bloatware), so I went for it and am happy with the result.
As for desktop environment, in practice the thing just runs Kodi all the time as the frontend, hence is perfect for controlling with a remote, like the one I linked in my original post. Any linux style kind of management I do remotelly from another computers, either from the command line via SSH or via web interfaces. In practice whilst I do have a keyboard and mouse connected to it, they’re very rarelly used.
I later found out that using LibreELEC (a whole Linux distro meant specifically for use as a TV box were Kodi is the frontend) would probably have been an optimal choice for a TV box rather than starting from a light ubuntu variant and customizing it myself, plus LibreELEC would’ve worked just as well on an ARM based SBC (something like an Orange Pi 3) which would’ve been cheaper and would’ve used even less power. That said, I had intended from he start to hang more services from that box (for example, I wanted to replace the NAS “solution” I had in place using my router, which only supported SMBv1) so starting from a more generic Linux distro probably made more sense that using a TV Box specific light distro.
The thing is a bit of a Frankenstein monster on the inside but doesn’t at all look like it when used in my living room to play media on the TV.
If the thing is not meant to use as a Desktop, why load it with heavier applications that aren’t delivering anything useful?
No matter how efficient a core is at most tasks, it can’t beat the power savings of not actually running needless code.
My homemade TV Box isn’t running a lightweight desktop because I had to “limit myself”, it’s running one because I’m not losing anything by not having that which I don’t use and if that even just saves a few Watts a week, it still means I’m better off, which is satisfying as I like to design my systems to be efficient.
For fancy Linux Desktop things I have an actual Desktop PC with Linux - the homemade TV Box on my living room is only supposed to let me watch stuff on TV whilst I sit on my sofa.
Further, there are more than one form of efficiency - stuff like the N100 (and even more, the ARM stuff) are designed for power consumption efficiency, whilst desktop CPUs are designed for ops-per-cycle efficiency, which are not at all the same thing: being capable of doing more operations per cycle doesn’t mean something will consume less power in doing so (in fact, generally in Engineering if you optimize in one axis you lose in another) it just means it can reach the end of the task in fewer cycles.
For a device that during peak use still runs at around 10% CPU usage, having the ability to do things a little faster doesn’t really add any value.
Even the series 4000 Zen2 being more optimized for power consumption is only in the context of desktop computers, a whole different world from what the N100 (and even more things like ARM7) were designed to operate in, which is why the former has a TDP of 140W and the latter of 15W (and the ARMs are around 6W). Sure the TDP is a maximum and hence not a precise metric for a specific use case such as using something as a TV Box, but it’s a pretty good indication of how much a core was optimized for power consumption, and 15W vs 140W is a pretty massive distance to expect that any error in using TDP to estimate how the power consumption of those two in everyday use as a TV Box compares would mean that the CPU with 140W TDP consumes less than the one with 15W.
PS: All that said, if the use case was “selfhosting” rather than “TV Box (with a handful of lightweight services on the side)”, you suggestion makes more sense, IMHO.
Also, in my experience of trying Android boxes first and ending up with a Mini-PC with Linux, the Android boxes which are cheaper than basic Mini-PCs like the one with an N100 that I have, are underpowered, and the one’s which aren’t underpowered cost about the same as the Mini-PC.
Further, you can install all manner of services running on the background on the Linux machine: mine works as TV Box with Kodi as the frontend that’s displayed on my TV, but it’s also working as my home NAS and runs a bittorrent server with a web interface on top of an always on VPN, all of which uses very little of its computing power. I manage the “linuxy” stuff remotely via web-interfaces and SSH whilst in the living room were it is I actually have a remote for it and use it just like a regular TV Box.
This in addition to as you pointed out the Android stuff being locked down and often bloated.
I really would advise people against an Android TV box, but if one really wants the lower consumption of those (they do consume half as much power as my Mini-PC, with TDPs around 8W or less to the Mini-PC’s 15W) best get an SBC and a box for it, and then install Libreelec on it or a full linux distro (often the manufacturers have a Linux distro for those and there’s always Armbian),
I use one of these which I got from AliExpress along with one of these, though of course it will work fine with mouse and keyboard.
(Please note that I haven’t tested it specifically with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse).
I installed Lubuntu on it because it’s a lighter distro (it will work fine with the full desktop Linux distros, but why waste computing power on fancy window managers for something that’s just a TV Box that’s always showing Kodi) and have it always turned on (the TDP of this is pretty low) with Kodi as interface and its runs perfectly.
It’s sitting on my living room under the TV.
It’s probably a little overpowered, but that means its fan almost never turns on (it’s pretty quiet when it does, but silence is better), so I’m also running a bittorrent server on it with an always on VPN, plus it’s my NAS. There’s room for more if I wanted.
I don’t really understand people advising the more powerful Mini-PCs: they’re way overpowered for the job hence needlessly expensive plus the TDP of their processors is way more than the N100 in this one hence it both consumes more and is a lot less quiet because the fan has to be bigger and running a lot more often to cool that hotter processor down.
PS: Also the downside of using old PCs for this as some recommend is their higher power consumption, even for notebooks, plus they generally don’t really look like a nice TV-Box to have in your living room, which this one does. If you’re going to run it all the time, a low TDP mini-pc will probably quickly pay itself over using an old desktop, longer if versus an old notebook.
Steal the cake from the public.
Slice it up and sell the slices to the fatcats at discounted prices.
Throw a few crumbs towards members of the public and claim that “now everybody can own it”.
It’s been the neoliberal strategy for privatizing public assets since the very start.
That’s a “people” preference.
Mandatory registration of who buys a SIM card is a “government” preference.
My point is that in Germany the Legislation favors privacy less than in other countries.
Your point seems to be that in Germany people favor privacy more than in other countries.
I made the point be about legislation because you mentioned GDPR / DSGVO, plus this post is about what governments are shoving down people’s throats when it comes to surveillance. I don’t expect that most people in Europe actually want governments snooping on their chats.
Still, it’s good to know that in Germany the people themselves favor privacy, even if so far they’ve been less successful at avoiding governmental overreach on surveillance than people in many other European nations (though compared with, say, Britain, Germany is veritable paradise in terms of state surveillance of the civil society).
You literally have to provide identification when buying a SIM card for a mobile phone in Germany and it all gets registered.
Most of Europe doesn’t have any such thing and even the UK with all it’s authoritarian overreach doesn’t have this.
There is literally no other use for this other than for the state to be to know who calls who.
Germany is a lot more “papers please” than most of Europe in my personal experience.
At least in Europe the land used to be owned by everybody (the so-called “Commons”) and then kings decided to take it all and make it the property of the Crown which would then divy it out to favored servants of the Crown.
Modern laws around Land Ownership are just a natural extension of the laws made in the Monarchical system and which were mainly preserved and extended in the transition to Republic and later Democracy, probably as a way to try and keep the landed gentry from stopping that transition (also, having lived through a Revolution from Authoritanism to Democracy an its aftermath, it’s my impression that the powerful from the previous regime generaly get to keep most of their possessions and hence power, even some amount of political power as they use their wealth to fund parties to represent their interests under Democracy).
Let’s not forget that he was an old guy with the hots for a younger woman - Dulcinea - who he wanted to impress, hence attacking the “giants”.
There are many levels in Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Dust is going to be a problem (well, maybe not that much electrically, but it maks it a pita to keep clean) after some months, especially for the Raspberry Pi.
Consider getting (or, even better, 3D printing) an enclosure for it at least (maybe the HDDs will be fine as they are since the fan keeps the air moving and dust probably can’t actually settle down on it).
External 2.5" HDDs connected via USB for longer term bulk storage and using it as a NAS, a smaller internal NVME SSD for the OS and a larger one (but SATA, so slower) for the directory were torrents go to.
The different drive performances fit my usage pattern just fine whilst optimizing price per GB.
External 3.5" would be cheaper for bulk storage but the 2.5" are a leftover from when I was more constrained in terms of physical space.
Well, the N100 does have a lot more breathing space in terms of computing power, so it’s maybe a better bet for something you want to use for a decade or more, and that remote control I linked to above does work fine, except for the power button (which will power your Linux off but won’t power it back on).
I actually tried an Android TV Box (which is really just and SBC in the same range of processing power as the Pi) for this before going for the Mini PC and it was simply not as smooth operating.
That Mini-PC has enough computing power room (plus the right processing extensions) that I can be torrenting over OpenVPN on a 1Gb/s connection whilst watching a video from a local file and it’s not at all noticeable on the video playback.
Kodi install instructions are here
I don’t use docker, I use lubuntu with normal packages. So for example Kodi is just installed from the Team Kodi PPA repository (which, granted, is outdated, but it works fine and I don’t need the latest and greatest) and just set it up to be auto-started when X starts so that on the TV it’s as if Kodi is the interface of that machine.
Qbittorrent is just the server only package (qbittorrent-nox) which I control remotelly via its web interface and the rest is normal stuff like Samba.
After the inital set up, the actual linux management can be done remotelly via ssh.
That said, LibreELEC is a Linux distro which comes with Kodi built-in (it’s basically Kodi and just enough Linux to run it), so assuming it’s possible to install more stuff in it might be better - I only found out about it when I had my setup running so never got around to try it. LibreELEC can even work in weaker hardware such as a Raspberry Pi or some of its clones.
Also you can get Kodi as a Flatpak which works out of the box in various Linux distros so if you need the latest and greatest Kodi plus a full-blown Linux distro for other stuff you might do the choice of distro based on supporting flatpack and being reasonably lightweight (I actually originally went for Lubuntu exactly because it uses a lightweight Window Manager and I expected that N100 mini-pc to need it, though in practice the hardward can probably run a lot more heavy stuff than that, though lighter stuff means the CPU load seldom goes up significativelly hence the fan seldom turns on and so the thing is quiet most of the time and you only hear the fan spinning up and then down again once in a while even in the Summer).
As for docker, there are a lot of instructions out there on how to install Kodi with Dockers, but I never tried it.
Also you might want to get a remote like this, which is a wireless remote with a USB adapter, not because of the air-mouse thing (frankly, I never use it) but simply because the buttons are mapped to exactly the shortcuts that Kodi uses, so using it with Kodi in Linux is just like using a dedicated remote for a TV Media Box - in fact all those thinks are keyboard shortcuts (that remote just sends keypresses to the PC when you press a button) and they keyboard shortcuts for media players seem to be a standard.
It really depends on what you’re doing with it and on what old PCs you have available.
I have an N100 Mini-PC at home in my living room connected to my TV which is both a home server and a TV-Box using Kodi (I even have a remote for it).
Having modern image and video decoding in hardware is pretty useful when I’m using it as a TV Box (there is zero stutter with it), whilst the rest of the time the thing mostly sits doing some low CPU-intensive server tasks (mainly torrenting and SMB server stuff).
Also, it’s a small box that fits fine on my TV stand without standing out and runs silent pretty almost all of the time.
Further, I don’t have any low power consuming old PCs around - the best are some chunky old notebooks, the rest are old gaming PCs which eat more power idle than the mini PC does at full load - and even the notebooks aren’t that low power as all that.
Mind you, for many years I used an old Asus EEE PC (a very small notebook running Linux) as home file server (with external HDs) and had a separated dedicated hardware TV Media Server box playing files from it, but eventually that PC stopped working and I found out I could just use my Router as a file server.
Last but not least, judging for how long I kept using my TV Media Server boxes (which over almost 2 decades I had 2 different ones and which as dedicated hardware could not easilly be upgraded when new video compression standards came out) 10+ years is definitelly my time-frame for using that Mini-PC.
All this to say that you should consider using old hardware, especially if you have some around and it’s task appropriate (like I did before using an old Asus EEE PC as a home file server), but also take in account what you’re going to do it and consider if new hardware won’t be better over the timespan you will likely be using it and if the being able to get a more task appropriate form factor (like how having a little box-size Mini PC lets me have it in my living room on a TV stand next to my TV and my fiber router) is worth it.
In summary, before you get hardware you should ponder a bit about what you intend to do with it before you decide what to get, don’t be afraid of using stuff you already have and also don’t be afraid to get new stuff if it’s actually justified by hardnosed reasons rather than merely some variant of the “new stuff smell” psychological effect when buying new.
Well, been * ahem * told that a friend of a friend didn’t found any videos there were “Your friendly neighborhood geek goes into the house of a hot milf to upgrade her Windows 10 machine to Arch and she shows them how hot she found their Linux install skills and how thankful she is”, so that seems unlikely.
So what you’re saying is that there are more wankers on Linux nowadays!???
The actual driver for an HID USB device, even on WIndows, is still just a few KB.
Worse, the default driver for HID devices like mice, keyboards, joysticks, gamepads and so on is part of Windows since Windows 7 and all you had to do was give it an INF file that really just associated USB hardware devices that sent the PC a specific identifier (made up of a VID and a PID value) on USB protocol initialization, with that built-in driver - and that file is maybe 100 bytes. Even better, that INF file is not even needed anymore since Windows 10.
A driver for a mouse (pretty much the simplest Human Interface Device there is) that in addition to the normal mouse thing also supports setting the RGB color of some lights is stupidly simple because the needed functionality is already in the protocol.
Remember, modern digital electronics still uses really tiny processors sometimes with less than 32KB flash memory (and way less than that in RAM) only they’re microcontrollers rather than microprocessors now, hence the protocols are designed so that they can be handled by processing hardware with little memory (after all, many USB Hosts aren’t PCs but instead are things like USB HUDs which have microcontrollers not microprocessors)
I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that almost the entirety of that 1GB is bloatware.
People doing things with their time and expertise without a profit motivation is Communism!
/s