by freddy » Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:24 pm
I don't have a spare econo-box to run a Linux distro. The positive sides for this is to def become boss at using the CLI. I tried to mess with ubuntu a long time ago (wanted to build skills become a RHCE-focused admin) but gave up because of the lack of driver support for my laptop, even for a Lenovo thinkpad.
However, I don't have the home theater equip yet or elsewhere to utilize massive media storage. (4K would be a waste of bit-rate bandwidth streaming to my mobile devices due to the 1080p resolution) Really, this would be media-centric server. I don't need CPU computing power for any specific applications beyond decoding 4K HD or large RAM for virtualization home lab. And with non-ASIC crypto-mining, I'd have to build rigs and install etherOS which presumably I'd have to "get gud" at the CLI anyways. The downside is that if I build a econo-fileserver I'd probably want to setup a reliable hardware RAID-5, which is going to add-up to the cumulative total.
Therefore, now I'm thinking about picking up a QNAP 2-bay econo-NAS for $99 that's is on-sale at Frys (if they ever restock online) and keep using my 10/2mbps econo-internet, if not upgrade to 50/50mbps Fios to take advantage of the 100mb/s NAS's sustained read/write speeds. For the price and time-cost benefit, it's probably be more worthwhile to hold off until I really need develop sysyadmin skills. Worse case is that I just sign-up for DigitalOcean hosting and configure a cloud-droplet of CentOS remotely if need be. Thanks for thinking out loud with me.