I had a Chinese Android box gathering dust in a drawer. It had been sidelined because it was stuck on an outdated version of Android, with no updates in sight from the manufacturer. I started considering alternatives like a Raspberry Pi or a budget x86 mini PC to set up a PVR with TVheadend. But before placing an order, I wondered if I could repurpose the Android box as a Linux server. After all, it had decent specs: an Amlogic S905X2 chip, 4 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of internal storage.

A quick search revealed that it was possible to boot Linux on the box using a microSD card or USB stick. Within an hour, I had CoreELEC up and running. One of the great things about CoreELEC is the ease with which you can install Docker and TVheadend. This meant that my forgotten Android box was now transformed into a functional Linux server.

I hooked up a TV tuner (yes, I'm aware it's not exactly cutting-edge, but I need OTA TV for work) and installed TVheadend. It essentially turned the box into a budget-friendly HDHomeRun. I even set up AdGuard Home and configured my router to use it as a network-wide ad blocker.

Once you have Docker running, the possibilities are endless. To my surprise, I even discovered that you can boot Armbian on these inexpensive boxes and use them as a lightweight desktop. Or turn them into a router or pihole box using openwrt.

Can you please share your backup strategies for linux? I'm curious to know what tools you use and why?How do you automate/schedule backups? Which files/folders you back up? What is your prefered hardware/cloud storage and how do you manage storage space?

When I read through the release announcements of most Linux distributions, the updates seem repetitive and uninspired—typically featuring little more than a newer kernel, a desktop environment upgrade, and the latest versions of popular applications (which have nothing to do with the distro itself). It feels like there’s a shortage of meaningful innovation, to the point that they tout updates to Firefox or LibreOffice as if they were significant contributions from the distribution itself.

It raises the question: are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software? Are they adding any genuinely useful features or applications that differentiate them from one another? And more importantly, should they be?

I have an old ThinkPad 11e running Debian that I have repurposed into a home server. It's only supposed to run TVheadend. I don't need any other services for now, but later on i might add a few using docker.

Is it enough to set multiuser.target as default to disable gui and keep the system always on?

How can I disable all unnecessary services and minimize power usage?

Has anyone here had success with USB fingerprint scanners? I also found this Microsoft keyboard with fingerprint reader but I don't know if it works with linux.

I want to be able to access (watch and record) a couple of FTA tv channels on several devices on my LAN.

I already have a couple of USB tuners so I don't want to spend money on HDHomerun.

I did some research and most people recommended TVheadend.

I've also stumbled upon minisatip but there is almost no documentation for it.

Any recommendations?

https://github.com/neeeeow/Bluecurve

Someone has ported Bluecurve theme to GTK3/4.

I'm looking for a portable, very compact linux laptop.

Screen size: 12 inch or smaller Weight: less than 1 kg (2.2 pounds) Full hd screen

I did some googling and i only found a CHUWI laptop that suffers from an overheating issue.

I have an old Mac Pro that has been collecting dust for years. Today I bought an SSD and install Debian on the machine. It works flawlessly.

Further reading revealed that there is an active community around the classic mac pros and thanks to their modular nature they can be fully upgraded. People even upgrade the CPUs in this thing.

So if you like playing around with a PC like the old days, that is also Linux compatible, a Mac Pro 5,1 seems a good choice. AFAIK you can get it for cheap and a decent upgrade won't break the bank.

For me it's: Testdisk (and Photorec) Caddy Netstat Dig Aria2

I'm booting openwrt off a usb c thumb drive connected to a fanless Celeron mini pc. The pc is cool but the thumb drive is so hot i can't touch it.

Any ideas?

Ever since upgrading to Plasma 6 (fedora 40) my chrome web apps have been misbehaving when I try pinning them to the icon-only task manager (is that still what it's called?)

1.They randomly disappear from taskbar although i have pinned them

2.Sometimes they are there but wont work (i get a weird "chdir: not found" error)

3.Pinned chrome apps work but wont survive reboots.

Have you experienced a similar problem? I've tried both stable and beta versions of Google Chrome.

Is there a self-hosted downloader that would automatically download liked videos or the ones added to a specific playlist?

And why do you use them?

(I know wireguard, tailscale and so on are the preferred options. But for some reaon I can't use any vpn atm)

I'm looking for some tunneling solution which:

-is NOT Cloudflare Tunnels

-doesn't need a VPN (so wireguard or openvpn are ruled out)

-is not SSH tunnel

I need something like FRP preferably with a luci app and automatic ssl certificate for my subdomain.

Any recommendations?

I used to hate android emulators, since the ones I'd tested on Windows were ad-ridden, slow bloatware.

The other day I needed to run an android app on Fedora 40.

I tried Waydroid and it worked very well. The app ran supersmooth as if it was running natively.

Also the cli syntax was very sane an user friendly.

waydroid app install|run|list ...

So if you need an Android app on linux the experience might be better than what you think it would be.

Jellyfin is very unreliable with live tv in my experience. It takes ages to reload a playlist and sometimes the old channels still appear in library. Is there a better alternative?

I have an openwrt router at home which also acts as my home server. It's running a bunch of services using docker (Jellyfin, Nextcloud, etc.)

I have set up an SSH tunnel between my openwrt router and VPS and can access jellyfin successfully.

I understand that I need to set up a reverse proxy to access multiple services and have https.

But I'm confused if I should set up this reverse proxy on the VPS or on the router itself. Is nginx the easiest option? Should i add subdomains in cloudflare for every service?

Pease don't recommend vpns since they are all blocked where i live (wireguard, tailscale openVPN, etc.) I'm limited to using ssh tunneling only.

Thanks