Linux

I have one of those 8.1 laptops - I LITERALLY fished it out of a dumpster.

Power consumption is a massive reason to really not do that. Its cheap for a reason, its takes a shitload of power to be shit and you will pay more in energy than you save in hardware unless its only powered on for short periods of time - a server typically isn't.

This is actually something that applies to cheap products too. Was in Asda a little while ago and saw 2 LED bulbs with the same lumen rating. Cheaper one used 3w more and you only saved £1. Running it for 8 hours a day for a year would cost double that saving in electricity. For a server you are looking at almost £2 per watt each year. Does that ewaste look so good to you now?

Some things are absolutely worth getting second hand, but you really should be careful considering the power cost as well.

Quick edit: If you don't need it running 24/7, consider something like AWS too. I love selfhosting but if its not running much it might be cheaper to not bother buying hardware.

I would say it can sometimes be nice to have an old Laptop for this purpose, you have to slightly over build your solar but can be nice to have a mouse and keyboard attached and monitor, ssh works. Still have an hp laptop with a core i5 2nd gen sitting out in my greenhouse, is a little more power hungry but not terrible on idle, and is nice to be able to configure changes to watering without going back inside or wrecking the zen by bringing phone.

The day i can fit the power of a computer capable of emulating the switch 1 in a gameboy shell will be glorious.

And for some (including me) that's our only computer (other than phone). I just can't afford anything, so all I have is a shitty laptop from 2010 that barely plays 1080p video. I deeply want something better, especially a steam deck, but doesn't look like that'll happen anytime soon (or ever). And then you see people have steam decks that just sit there, unused, gathering dust.... fuck.

I mostly agree, and did the same with my second gen lab build - instead of shiny new NUCs like I had used round 1, I bought old off lease Dell Xeon boxes. SO MANY PROS -

• Got them up to 14c/28t each
• They can take GPUs and actually do heavy transcoding/ML work
• They can take up to like, 128GB of memory, which is GREAT when they're all hypervisors

The downsides can't be denied though -

• Even without the GPUs and beefed up CPUs, they are power hogs - the CPU alone uses more than an ENTIRE NUC
• They run HOT
• They run LOUD

The same holds true for off-lease SFF stuff, Lenovo and the likes ...

So while reuse/repurpose is absolutely of the utmost importance, no question - when it comes to technology and how quickly it advances and miniaturizes, a thorough and logical pros/cons list is often required.

I'd add another option though - if you do need what a Pi brings to the table - do you really need a shiny new Pi 5? Is it possible a used Pi 3 or Pi 4 would do the trick, and check the reuse box?

I dislike posts like this. Technology moves quickly. PIs are great for hobby electronics where you need a little computer. Want a cheap computer to run a few things 24/7 and know what you're doing? Pi it is. You don't need to run containers on a pi because you have the skills to install the dependencies manually. They cost pennies to run 24/7.

I think of pis as beefed-up calculators. I have made lots of money using a pi zero running code I needed to run 24/7. Code I developed myself.

Having an old laptop with outdated parts taking up lots of space, weighing a lot, and having components like fans, keyboard, and mousepad most-likely soon dying and needing replacing is an additional concern you don't want.

Someone below saying use an old laptop if you're living with parents and don't pay the electricity bill is a bit lame. Do your part for the world. Someone will be paying for it.

Ultimately, use what you want but if you're just starting with servers, use a virtual machine on your computer and log in to it. You can dick about with it as much as you want, and reset back to a working state in seconds.

Or get a used thin client (e. g. HP T620, T630, T640 or Dell Wyse 5070). Cost: ~40-100$. Biggest advantage: Passive cooling, i. e. they're absolutely quiet.

Some are talking about power consumption in this thread and I've had similar ideas. Gone are the days where I can run a beefy spec'd desktop in good conscience, it's just such a resource hog. I have a laptop that stays in hibernate mostly. My other idea for a low power consumption home computer was to get a Le Potato single board and pair that with an e-ink monitor (there's some really nice ones out there) which I think was sitting at maaaaybe ~5kwh. I think the more we can limit our power consumption, the better, all that electricty directy translates into coal being burned and additional CO2 being created. I'm no luddite, but it has impacted how I consume media which is now very mindful of the impact watching a few episodes/playing a couple hours of games versus just one or two hours of content on any given day.

Rockchip boards are way more efficient than Pis

Get them from where? I always read about these basically-free computers but have yet to see one

I now have a stack of Thinkpads laying around. Right next to my two RPis 😂

Where are these cheap e waste laptops with gpio and actually low power?

The only caveat here is the fire-hazard non-removable lithium batteries.