I’ve been eyeing these devices for some time now. The price point is… delicious!

I saw some opensource-ish project one day that mentioned that they are building an OS around Plex and other media servers and using these N5105s and selling the package for USD500ish (I think).

So I went hunting for the hardware and found it on Aliexpress for that cheap (sub USD200).

Does anyone have experience running these? How hard is it to get Ubuntu running on them? I dislike that they ship with Windows 11. Would be a few bucks cheaper if they shipped with Ubuntu or no OS, right?

Also, what about running docker on them? Can they support your usual homelab stuff? Portainer, Pi-hole, *arr softwares, a dashboard, etc.

  • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    It’s a mini PC (literally just a box). 8/16GB DDR4 RAM, 128/256/512GB 2.5 HDD, processor model options are Intel N5105/N100/N5095/J4125/N95. WIFI5 and Bluetooth 4. 2 USB 2s, 2 USB 3. No USB-C. Windows 11 Pro preloaded (ugh).

    But more importantly, how have you configured your browser? It’s a direct link to Aliexpress with no tracking middleware. Have you just blocked shopping sites to stay away from them?

      • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m considering using it either as a plex server with transcoding, or for CI/CD work using github actions to do some data pipelines and npm builds.

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          How many clients are you serving? That box is too OP for just a plex server.

          I think I could run at least a dozen k3s containers on that, with enough RAM and storage

          • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            No clients. Just me and another family member. I’d love to hear how you’d serve up a dozen containers on that. How much RAM? 16 gigs?

            • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Admittedly, I don’t know if Plex is CPU heavy.

              I could run a bunch of applications like a reverse-proxy, a load-balancer, a DNS resolver, a VPN server, an rysnc/Syncthing server, scripts to archive data, downloaders, an internal CA (although that might not be the best idea since you need to carefully back it up), an MQTT server, and maybe other things. These are random examples that came to mind, I’m sure there’s plenty more that can be done.

              Yes, I would go about 2TB of SSD storage and maybe 16-32GB RAM, although the latter might be overkill for this CPU.

              Cheers

              • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                out of all those, I’m most curious about that MQTT server. What’s your usecase for that? These CPUs don’t support anything more than 16GB RAM, so there’s that :)

                • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  I think Home Assistant is too much of bloat for a couple of IR sensors and relays. Also, if I do everything on Home Assistant, I might not be able to migrate to something else in the future. For now, n8n+MQTT is what I’ll use.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I don’t exactly remember what I have set up (will have to revisit my config, using Librewolf), but websites like Aliexpress are serious offenders of partial/incomplete redirection requests. Librewolf doesn’t like such behaviour, and neither do I.