iKOOLCORE R2 (Core i3-N300) system review – Part2: Proxmox VE, Ubuntu 22.04, pfSense
In the first part of iKOOLCORE R2 mini PC & router review, I had a look at the hardware with an unboxing and a teardown of the Intel Core i3-N300 Alder Lake-N computer and also noticed the device booted to a UEFI shell. So for the second part of the review, I will report my experience installing Proxmox VE on the iKOOLCORE R2 and setting up and using Ubuntu 22.04, pfSense 2.7.2, and OpenWrt 23.05 virtual machines, making sure I can still use a physical display, keyboard, and mouse with Ubuntu while pfSense firewall is running.
As a side note, the previous generation iKOOLCORE R1 mini PC that was sent to Ian for review with Proxmox VE and various virtual machines preinstalled OpenWrt, Debian 11, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC set to Chinese language by default. As I understand it, iKOOLCORE still does that for the Chinese market, but not for the overseas markets potentially because they don’t want to handle two versions and potential customs issues. This review will be a bit different than other mini PCs, as I’ll mostly report my experience of using the iKOOLCORE R2 with Proxmox VE and the steps I had to follow to make everything work the way I wanted with Ubuntu 22.04 and pfSense OS running simultaneously.