Since the Raspberry Pi has been out of stock for a while, I was looking at alternatives to install Gladys, and I wondered: wouldn’t an old Intel Mac mini bought second-hand on Leboncoin be a viable and performant alternative?
The characteristics of a Mac mini are perfect for Gladys:
I get the impression these Macs are being sold off cheaply since Apple is moving to M1/M2 (ARM) processors and people assume Intel Macs have no future — for Gladys we don’t care, they’re perfect for running a small server
What do you think? Does anyone run Gladys on a Mac mini or equivalent?
With a Mac mini, aren’t you afraid the fan will be too loud? I have the impression it’s a recurring problem.
I have all my home automation in my living room next to my TV and I don’t want to hear a fan constantly.
I was lucky to be able to get the model I mentioned for free, but otherwise you can sometimes find one (or an equivalent) on leboncoin for around €100–150.
Yeah, don’t worry, I’m thinking about my little report haha
I might try again then… what do you think the risk with 22.10 would be?
Is it having to go from 22.10 to each release (23.04 - 23.10 - etc..) until the next LTS? And basically risking a crash when upgrading?
If you ever want to install other software alongside Gladys, you can run into packages (system) that don’t support non-LTS. It happened to me recently ^^
Next year you won’t have updates anymore; basically every year you’ll have work to migrate.
Basically with 22.10 you’ll be covered until July 2023, with an LTS you’ll be covered until 2032:
So, for the details:
during my first try the Ubuntu 22.04 installer wouldn’t even start, a black screen (with the Ubuntu logo at the bottom) that stayed frozen.
In the end I first used the « Try » Ubuntu option because I wanted to take the opportunity to do a check-up of my disk partitioning. Once the check-up was done, I launched the installer which didn’t freeze this time
I had to go to work afterwards so I’ll check later whether the installation completed successfully!
@pierre-gilles it’s indeed Ubuntu and not Ubuntu Server, because I wanted to have a desktop available if needed on the machine. Given the NUC’s configuration I’m not wasting essential resources either with a DE which, moreover, is rather lightweight (GNOME).
ANYWAY I’ll keep you posted soon to make sure everything goes well!
haha
