beigeoat

The point about GPU's is pretty dumb, you can rent a stack of A100 pretty cheaply for a few hours. I have done it a few times now, on runpod it's 0.79 USD per HR per A100.

On the other hand the freely available models are really great and there hasn't been a need for the closed source ones for me personally.

You can get pretty sleek mini-pc in the price but, there performance is sub-par compared to the price they are asking for.

While itx for factor is very expensive, m-atx is cheaper and there are quite few sleek cases for them.

If you are looking for prebuilt mini pc, asustor flashtor is pretty sleek if you only want m.2 storage.

Why not build a new PC or buy an old pc? One with ryzen 5 5600G, 8gb Ram, 250GB ssd should cost ~250USD whether you buy new/old, i recently checked the prices, cause I needed one and they were similar. This should take you a long way. As for storage just pick a case with enough ssd/harddisk slots.

You can also go much cheaper depending on what you get.

The advantage is you can add a GPU like the intel A380 for av1 encoding of video if you feel like you need it.

For OS depending on what you are doing there are a few choices:

• True nas: mid difficulty
• debian: i just use this with docker, does the job
• alma linux/Rocky linux
• ubuntu
• yunohost: if you would be interested in hosting activitypub apps, easy
• casaos: easy

Hot take: it doesn't feel nice to have a change forced.

It should be the personal preference of the user to decide whether to use native or snap/flatpak. If native package manager decide to not support the package any longer it would be better to make user aware and stop maintaining app, than to install a snap package. This is a user's decision.

Also this can have far reaching consequences. Imagine you cannot use/install snaps on your machine due some reason, what now?

I don't know why people keep suggesting reverse proxy when this is what OP is looking for.

I had a question about email.

I am currentl, routing(Cloudflare Email Routing) my email to a Yahoo mail account, basically all incoming email gets routed to my yahoo, and from Yahoo I can send email with my custom address as the sender address.

As far as I am aware I have a daily limit of 200 emails and 1tb storage, all this for free.

Would such a service not be better for your purpose too? Are there certain advantages to paying for an email provider?

A few reasons other than privacy to use linux:

1. Drivers for majority of the software are already installed. This means for most devices, it is just plug and play, no need to scour the internet for device drivers.
2. Installing and updating packages through package manager is a much-much better solution than going to websites, downloading installer, than installing the software and then remembering to update each and every piece of software.
3. Customization, you make the UI look and behave like you please. It is my belief that the UI should be user-specific not how a certain company feels a UI should be like.
4. Much better OS updates, Updating the OS doesn't all the time require restart (you should do that anyway), but OS updates don't happen suddenly forcing themselves, when you maybe doing something important.
5. Printing is a much better experience. This may not be for all, but I print stuff regularly, but I had issues with printers on windows, that I don't have on linux. Cups and Sane are amazing.
6. Its just faster and runs like a champ, even on old hardware.
7. No ads. This shouldn't even be a thing, but microsoft in their infinite wisdom, show ads on a OS that the user has paid for.
8. You can uninstall any software you don't want. Don't like firefox as default browser? just uninstall and use whatever you want. Don't like your file explorer? there are quite a few to choose from, or don't want to have a file explorer? the choice is yours.
9. You should explore it, you should check out what all it has to offer, try different desktop environments, try tiling window managers, maybe you will find something you really like. Virtual desktops for example, in my personal opinion are done much better on linux than on windows/mac.

After you setup Linux to your requirements, there really isn't a reason to use windows.

A few reasons not to use linux:

1. Your work/school require that you use windows/mac.
2. Some hardware that is necessary for you doesn't have linux support/drivers.
3. Some software(this applies to games as well) you use is not available/work on linux and the alternative doesn't exist, or the alternative isn't good or you really require that specific software.
4. You are happy with your OS. This is a perfectly fine, use whatever you are comfortable with.

If you do decide to use linux a few recommendations:

1. If you plan on using linux for a long term, use something like debian (or debian based, ubuntu is fine, but I don't like it)/redhat based distro like alma or rocky . These are stable and for the most part you can just install them and forget about them. Arch is good, but you have so many updates daily, it kind of takes a toll on you. fedora,opensuse are a good middle ground if you want regular software/os updates but not daily.

You may also be interested in something like NixOS. Check it out, it is a really interesting project but it isn't I would say yet for majority of the users.

2. try out different Desktop environments, I would say this is much more important than your choice of distro. Experience them all and pick one you find the best for yourself. Do this in a VM, trust me on this.

Just go Cloudflare. The dot.win told they have is incredible value ~3$ per annum if i remember correctly.

Other pros of using Cloudflare:

• Cloudflare ddns
• Cloudflare tunnels
• Cloudflare proxy

It does a a few cons, like not being able to use custom nameservers if you aren't paying 200$ a month. Also the fact of Cloudflare being an internet gatekeeper may not be to your liking.

I did not know this, I thought there were being done here. Sorry if this troubled you, will keep this in mind moving forward.