I’ve been thinking about this old desktop machine under my desk that hasn’t been used in years. I’m thinking the death of the desktop computer is not too far ahead for me. I can’t see myself buying another in my lifetime and my building days ended in the mid 90s. I don’t really have a need for this thing at all, I don’t game, I’m pretty much off the internet already. Ageing out of all of it I suppose.

My question is, as a bit of a weekend hobby, is it feasible for a bit of an ordinary Joe, middle/a little older aged, to go from a life in MS and never having to run a server or hosting anything, to follow something like this to any meaningful outcome? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5911320

I write a bit of vba, do a fair bit of querying to a database someone else maintains for a living. (SQL). Again, never much but basic tables and queries/procedures.

The desktop currently is: OS: windows 10 home Processor: Intel i7-6700k @ 4GHz Graphics: GTX970 Ram: 16gb

Kidding myself? Obviously I’m thinking Linux and learning a new OS to some extent would in theory be in the mix.

  • ArmainAP@programming.dev
    3·
    11 months ago

    Have you looked into a TrueNAS Scale? It is designed to be treated more like an appliance than a tinkering file system. Besides NAS capabilities, it also allows running Kubernetes as “apps” on it, including the *arr ones.

    P.S.: If you take a shot at it, stay out of Truecharts. They might be tempting and look amazing but their update stability and communications are not that great.

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
    3·
    10 months ago

    This is the perfect machine to play around with linux on. If you’re going to toss the computer anyway, you have zero stakes to learn a new OS.

    I’d use Windows’ Media Creation Tool to make Windows installation media. If your linux journey doesn’t work out or you get bored, you can slap a factory Windows image on it and sell it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. You can probably get $100-120 for it, maybe more.

  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I think what you’re looking for is YunoHost. Install linux on your computer, then install yunohost and you’ll get a web interface to install all the services you like: nextcloud, invidious, matrix, cryptpad, airsonic, etc.

    IMO, it’s the easiest way to get started with hosting stuff without knowing anything about docker, apache/nginx, php, or whatever. Their guide is quite readable and you seem technically affine, so you should be OK 👍

  • TheCee@programming.dev
    1·
    11 months ago

    Other than power draw of that computer and staring at computers in your free time, why not?

    If this guide seems too focussed *solely *on consumption, you could always learn how to install Postgres from remote and create a roguelike as procedures in the database, so you can game again, through the miracle of endless random number generation. You could proceed to manage those scripts in git, which you also could self-host on this machine.

  • vivavideri@lemmy.world
    1·
    10 months ago

    I still have my i7-6700k. Play around with multibooting, for sure. I can’t upgrade hackintosh past wherever but it’s still fun to have. I use clover bootloader. Usually end up in win10 most of the time but whenever I power on, i always have the option of win10, osx, and Ubuntu. Fun shit.