💾 Archived View for lark.gay › posts › new-linux-box.gmi captured on 2024-08-18 at 17:06:10. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've been thinking about building a small Linux box for the living room.
I like playing PC games with friends when I have them over—usually one of us driving and the other watching. Typically we'll use the TV in the living room, and I'll just lug my desktop from my room.
I spent a long time researching different methods for streaming games through two walls to the living room—preferably without needing any special hardware on that side—and concluded that the fastest, simplest, and cheapest solution was to pick up my tower and move it back and forth.
Moving the tower I don't mind so much; the real chore is managing all the peripherals. In my room I have two monitors, a keyboard, mouse, mic, webcam, headphones, and YubiKeyÂą that all need to be unplugged. And then in the living room I need to plug back in the TV, mouse, and keyboard.
Hence putting a dedicated PC in the living room.
I mostly play indie games, so I don't need anything too powerful. I honestly might be fine with just integrated graphics. APUs are getting pretty good; I was eyeballing the ones AMD released at CES this year.
Games aside, it'll also be nice to have an easy way to play local files on the TV. I have some movies and TV shows that aren't on streaming services and I only have local copies of.
I might also use this box as a homelab. I don't self-host anything on my desktop because I put it to sleep when I'm not using it, but this thing could stay on 24/7.
The main thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the cost, because I want to build something tiny, and apparently building a mini-ITX machine is expensive? I guess the components are more expensive in that form-factor? I wasn't expecting that. And if I want to eventually buy a dedicated mouse and keyboard for the living room, that'll add to the cost (I really shouldn't give myself excuses to buy more keyboards).
I'll sit on this for another 2-3 weeks before I commit, but I think it would be really nice to have.
[1]: I have a long USB extension cable for the YubiKey so it sits on my desk next to my keyboard. I have it hooked up to PAM so I can use it for sudo auth, and it's very satisfying having a sudo button on my desk.
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