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How I turned a Gaming Mini-PC into my first home server
As mentioned, we used the latest stable version of Ubuntu (at the time of writing, it was 25.10) without a GUI. This means the PC is only usable via the command line, which officially makes me a hacker and a protagonist in Mr. Robot.
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Playing around with this setup has awakened my inner nerd, and I want to explore Linux much more. The last time I mained a Linux version was over 15 years ago, when I fried my Windows install and was so fed up that I ran openSUSE and Linux Mint for a few months. Then I bought a Mac and never looked back.
But between playing around on the Steam Deck, installing Bazzite on a bunch of devices, and now this project, my interest in Linux has only grown. Add to that the fact that macOS Tahoe looks terrible, and Windows is only good as a gaming platform, trying Linux might actually be a viable option. Especially since about 80% of my work happens in a browser.
So, as I’m writing this, I’m downloading some Linux-distros to the mini PC and plan to use the untapped power of the 7840U (since the web apps I’m running barely tickle Hebe) to run a virtual machine I can connect to when I’m on the go.
As mentioned, my primary work machine is a MacBook Pro running Apple Silicon, so while I could use Asahi Linux, this method seems like the best of both worlds. When I need something that doesn’t run on Linux, I can switch to macOS, and when I want to feel like Elliot Alderson, I just remotely connect to Hebe.
So 2025 might just be my year of Linux on the Desktop. Or at least the year of pretending I know what I’m doing.