Anyone running Ubuntu on a fanless PC?

FabTri

Member
Hi everyone,

I want to buy a fanless PC to use as a home server. I want to run Ubuntu on it, ideally Ubuntu 20.04.

Has anyone got any success with that?

Cheers!
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Hi everyone,

I want to buy a fanless PC to use as a home server. I want to run Ubuntu on it, ideally Ubuntu 20.04.

Has anyone got any success with that?

Cheers!
You can run Ubuntu off a raspberry pi quite happily, no issues there. It all depends what you want to run ON Ubuntu?
 

FabTri

Member
Hi @SpyderTracks ,

I already run a raspberry pi for my NextCloud server. But it's too slow and take ages to do anything, especially uploads. So I want something much faster, hence my enquiry. I am thinking of a NUC, it seems some people have been able to install Ubuntu 20.04 on it. Ubuntu officially support the NUC, but only with Ubuntu 16.04 (which has now reached end of life, so I find this really odd...)
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Hi @SpyderTracks ,

I already run a raspberry pi for my NextCloud server. But it's too slow and take ages to do anything, especially uploads. So I want something much faster, hence my enquiry. I am thinking of a NUC, it seems some people have been able to install Ubuntu 20.04 on it. Ubuntu officially support the NUC, but only with Ubuntu 16.04 (which has now reached end of life, so I find this really odd...)
Ah, yes, that’s a bit different then, I’ll have to leave that to the Linux gurus.
 

MfromF

Member
Ubuntu isnt't the best deal for a raspi, because running from SD card it is not too fast in cause of the size of some files. Debian (Rasperi Pi OS) would be a better deal.

A NUC is always a great idea for a XXS server. I'm running some i3 NUCs at customers as a small server even with two virtualized machines on it. On those virtual machines I'm hosting a backup server for email or a chat server to communicate between computers in bigger doctor's office.

When no i3 processor is needed, I don't take a NUC, but a ZBOX. Those have two ethernet ports, which can be pretty nice doing some weird network tasks (e.g. network sniffer).
 

FabTri

Member
Hi @MfromF ,

Thanks for your input. Have you been able to successfully run Ubuntu 20.04 (or any recent version of it) on the NUC?

Cheers
 

MfromF

Member
For those kind of installations I only use Debian.

Ubuntu comes from Debian and is even more able to run on a NUC, because it is more up to date. So no prob with that.

My hint is not to take the actual NUC, but the last model (NUC10). And I would prefer to build in a SSD instead of an M.2. So better take a NUC which has the possibility to. M.2 sometimes "forget" everything what is on, when they are powerless for more than a few days.
 

FabTri

Member
Hi @MfromF ,

OK I had a look around at m.2 vs traditional SSD. I think I will be fine with m.2 because (1) it's much faster than traditional SSD and (2) I will run a nightly backup anyway, so I am not too afraid of the m.2 malfunctioning.

Do you have some experience running Ubuntu or Debian with an m.2 drive?

Thanks a lot for your help!
 

MfromF

Member
Planing a server means meeting the best conditions for the work the server has to do. Stability always comes first, performance second.

The bottle neck of a server always is the network connection, whatever the server has to do. Speed of a SSD or a M.2 is a variable. What does "speed" describe? Reading, writing? The first MB or the time 4GB need to be written oder readen? Planing a server is a difference to planing a desktop or notebook ...
 
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