Yeah mine is a Broadwell i7, 3.1ghz with boost up to 3.4ghz, model number 5557U. The guy I bought it from maxed out the specs at launch and I bought pretty cheap a few years ago. For a ten year old device it runs like a dream and handles pretty much anything short of gaming and video editing with ease

This is very true to be fair, I’ve noticed it hallucinating multiple times. Critical thinking should be taught in schools, I feel like kids growing up with LLMs are taking way too much of it what they say at face-value. Interrogation and reflection is a must. For me, I use it as a shortcut to gain a base-level of knowledge, I only tinker when I’m sure I have the right information and won’t mess anything up.

I’d likely be running it with the lid closed 95% of the time

Okay thanks. Damn shame manufacturers keep removing useful ports

I should definitely play it relatively safe when it comes to this stuff. But I do think that, in lieu of formal training in networking, LLMs can be useful in the hands of someone who is cautious and responsible. I’m an adult with a full time job and other responsibilities, I don’t have the time or the inclination to take a course on networking. So, I’m strictly a hobbyist when it comes to this stuff, but I’m also not an idiot who thinks ChatGPT can magically solve any problems I throw at it.

That’s definitely a consideration. Are minipcs less power-hungry?

Thanks, yeah my Mac will be a dedicated machine for this setup. Do you think I should keep sonoma on it (obviously that’s an issue as far as my goal of going all-FOSS) or install proxmox/ another Linux distro?

Thank you, I’ll look into VPS, that’s new territory for me.

Re transcoding on Jellyfin. Yes that’s something I have considered. A lot of my media is x265 10-bit 1080p stuff, decent quality but not huge lossless blu-ray rips. I stick to encodes that are about 4-8gb a movie. Clients connecting to the server are a couple of laptops and two smart tvs using the native Jellyfin apps. So far I’ve only run into issue with things like AV1 files or very large 4k rips that won’t play on smart tv, mkvs play fine.

Thanks for the reply. Regarding pi-hole on WiFi, I can connect the laptop via LAN with a usb adapter. So that may mitigate that issue

KDE user here. Never used gnome, why is it an issue?

Thanks for the advice re: management. Definitely something we’ll need to plan for.

Yeah, I said they’re “useless as is”, because they’re running an outdated OS, have internet explorer on them, etc. the hardware is obviously far from useless but getting it to a good place in terms of user experience for a younger audience will involve a time investment. So yes, useless as is.

This is a good idea honestly, I’ll consider it!

Thanks for the super-informative post :) I’ve had a look around some more machines and there’s some i3’s in the mix too. Think I’m going to try Mint xfce on one of them and see if it copes. Yeah, consolidating ram seems like it should be a priority. There are a few i3 machines sitting headless gathering dust on the floor, they seem like a good place to scavenge from

There’s about 15 machines. Not a huge amount, I was definitely exaggerating with ‘a tonne’ haha. I think it just feels like a big waste, hence the exaggeration 😅

Yeah I’ve installed LTSC on a couple of machines too (goofygoobers version, I think) so that’s another option

Oh for sure, it’s just explaining that to boomer management that’s tough

Yeah, securing them might be the biggest challenge tbh. I work full-time at the school and won’t really have time to provide tech support. The windows machines are ‘managed’ by a third-party IT solutions company, but like I said they’re mostly useless at this point and are rarely turned on anymore.

Students don’t have user accounts so a generic log in could work. could see the school not allowing a Linux install without some sort of management/tech support procedure in place though. Security is probably the biggest hurdle to clear but I guess if we’re paying an IT company to manage window machines I don’t see why they couldn’t support Linux too, unless they’re unfamiliar with the OS :(