I bought a new computer. The Beelink U59 Mini PC 11th Gen 4-Cores N5105 cost me $120 from Amazon. It has a somewhat recent Intel Processor, 8GB RAM and a 500 GB SSD. It came with Windows installed, but I erased it and installed Debian with no GUI. It came with instructions to configure autoboot on power failure so I can hide it away in a closet.

This fills a gap I’ve had for some time. My house has been laptop-only for several years now, which leaves me nowhere to run always-on automation things. I have a Synology that I use for storage, but it is very low powered and somewhat hard to configure. My blog is served from a Linode virtual server, which can also fill this gap, but it is also resource-limited, less secure, and far from most of my data.

It has been fun to play with. I migrated some things from Linode to my home server and downsized the Linode. I set up a reverse proxy for my printer and scanner so that I can access the admin pages from outside of my house. I set up a Gitea server for some of my personal things. We will see what other useful purposes it can serve.