Yeah, I’m more or less just using NC for a cloud storage with WebDAV. I don’t really need all the other bits. So if NC were modular in that you could install or not the core pieces, that would be great.

If it makes you feel any better it sort of is Fedora. Fedora has both original and atomic flavors. Someone took the atomic flavor of Fedora (which comes as a blank slate) and added in some quality of life changes. Nothing permanent, just tweaking some settings and preinstalling some programs. And then called it as Aurora.

And the only difference between Aurora and Bluefin is KDE (very customizable and Windows like) vs Gnome (customizable through widgets, but not enough if you’re a power tweaker and more of a Mac style desktop environments). And Bazzite is the same, but gamer focused (I installed it on my steamdeck).

Yeah, I love NC but boy is it a pain. If there were a similar but less bulky, less clunky option that wasn’t a pain to maintain, I’d be all over that.

Yeah, seconded on Tailscale. I love how easy it is to get working. Only fear is the recent announcement of venture funding and future enshitification, but right now it’s amazing.

Yeah, I didn’t want to be not supportive of your choice of distros, but my immediate thought was not Ubuntu… I use it headless for some homelab servers, but nowadays as far as desktops go, Ubuntu is not it.

Someone below mentioned Aurora, Bazzite’s sister. I currently use Bluefin, which is another of Bazzite’s sisters, also on Framework, and it has been pretty set it and forget it. They’re all “atomic” desktops in that it’s hard to be able change the underlaying important parts of your computer, while you have free reign on all the bits that aren’t important to keep the lights on. Updates happen frequently, but don’t touch your files on top, so it’s always the latest, and if something does break, you can easily boot up into the last image you were on.

If you’re not looking to tweak your computer too much and just want it to run, I’d recommend Aurora or Bluefin depending on your desktop preferences.

I read about Tailscale securing funding and also was scared enshitification would ensue. I really hope their promise to keep non-enterprise as it is and not claw it back is true. I am way too relient on that now 🫤

It’s openid so it should work. Though their web finger validation wasn’t quite straightforward when I did it.

I just got Authentik set up as my first SSO. Has anyone tried this?

This would just be a way for you to see what qbittorent is doing from your phone. In qbit you’d turn on a few settings and then point this app to what you just turned on, and then see what’s downloading from your phone.

The app isn’t doing anything beyond taking interpreting what your other programs (e.g., qbit, sonarr, radarr, etc) are doing while you’re away. Depending on the program you could also tell it to download something, but that’s all still happening on your laptop. Your phone is just the middle man.

What do you mean? The nzb360 app is just a front end for services you have running on a server somewhere. Are you asking how to run the backend part discreetly?

Aw, Mandrake! I didn’t know what I was doing back then and chose it because of the root. Stuck with it until Ubuntu came out a bit later.

While I would be open to a trade, I’d be more looking for something like the Synology that I already have, just not so walled garden. I currently have a number of 2.5 and 3.5 inch disks that I’d like to keep using, and I think the Optiplex is more of just a regular desktop than a server?

Huh, I’m also in the PNW. This could work out. I think it’s a bit too much for my needs, and I really don’t have the space for it. That said, I do want to learn how to use it, and get it up and running, etc. But after that I would definitely be looking to get something more practical. And quiet if it’s as loud as people are saying.

I have Bazzite on my steam deck and Bluefin on my laptop and have been very happy with them. The atomic part is great for not messing things up as a noob, but if OP does decide to dual boot then these distros won’t be the best choice as they don’t play well with other distros.

Uff, I wouldn’t even know how to ship that without it costing an arm and a leg

Ugh that’s unfortunate, because I do not have an out of the way place to put it. It didn’t make any noise when I plugged it in, but I imagine that comes from the drives when I insert them

Hey, thanks for your advice, and honestly the permission to be okay with not using it. I lost sight of that and it’s a good reminder. I am a little concerned for the noise and power consumption that everyone is talking about, especially since I don’t have an out of the way place to stick it.

That said, while I might ultimately not use it, I will at least learn enough to get it running. And like you said, fail a lot. But if I don’t have anything on it, failure won’t be so painful when I inevitability have to start over.

I’ll have to get some sort of adapter for VGA, and thanks for the talking about idrac. I had seen that mentioned on the server and had no idea what it was. So is the idrac website I’m connecting to like the website on routers used for configuration?

Hey thanks for the advice! Proxmox and TrueNAS seem to be what I should be looking into. Flashing with Rufus I’m familiar enough with, so that I can do. The one thing I don’t have is an out of the way place to put it 🫤 without any drives it didn’t make any noise, but I imagine that all comes from the drives doing their thing.

Thanks for the encouragement! To be honest, while it was a good place to start from its hand holding, I don’t love synology for how walled garden it is. I’ll definitely take a look at TrueNAS and see what that’s like.

Yup, that’s exactly it. Booting to a USB drive doesn’t change anything on your laptop until you tell it to, like by telling it to install. So there’s no harm in doing a dry run nowish. If you’re successful, it’ll boot into the USB drive, you’ll know you can do it, and then just reboot without the USB drive and everything is back to normal. If you do it incorrectly, same thing: just reboot without the USB drive and everything is back to how you left it.

Once you get it, you’ll be ready to go when you get your new laptop. But you can ask questions along the way and the real deal will be less stressful. Up to you though!