[colug-432] small linux hardware

[Rick Hornsby]

TL;DR - Looking for recommendations for small, low-power (really, low heat) Linux hardware. 1 core, 1GB of memory would be enough. I just want to run a personal nextcloud server on it. RaspberryPi-level power is acceptable, but that's been tried. Buy or build, either is fine. Would like to keep the cost low, since it won’t be doing much.

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For the last few months, I’ve been running Nextcloud and it’s been great. It’s more flexible than Dropbox (I can exclude file types, etc), doesn’t have fees or size restrictions, and I control all of the data. There are some downsides - I’m solely responsible for the server maintenance and application security, but I think those are fair trade-offs. It has let me do things like seamlessly switch between my laptop and desktop systems, by being able to exclude the IDE metadata.

I’ve been running it on a Pi, but that’s over. I went do to an OS update a couple of days ago and it barfed all over itself. That’s the third time a Pi put into long-term use has gone tango uniform. It’s a great platform, but not for long-term stuff - at least not without setting up the SD card as r/o and using a more appropriate/durable r/w storage medium. The first two died because of irreparable
 filesystem corruption (fsck), and the third doesn’t seem to be that, but the OS is unbootable and unrecoverable. (The nextcloud data was on a separate disk, not on the SD card.)

I’m started to set up Nextcloud on Dreamcompute (AWS-like, will run around $9/month), but then I thought “why? I’m paying a buttload for a business interwebs connection at home.” I’m used to building full-tower setups, so the other extreme of the market isn’t nearly as familiar to me. Really, the only other requirement is to be able to attach a bit of external storage - one drive via USB is enough - to it.

Thoughts or suggestions?

thanks!
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