I’ve been eyeing these devices for some time now. The price point is… delicious!
I saw some opensource-ish project one day that mentioned that they are building an OS around Plex and other media servers and using these N5105s and selling the package for USD500ish (I think).
So I went hunting for the hardware and found it on Aliexpress for that cheap (sub USD200).
Does anyone have experience running these? How hard is it to get Ubuntu running on them? I dislike that they ship with Windows 11. Would be a few bucks cheaper if they shipped with Ubuntu or no OS, right?
Also, what about running docker on them? Can they support your usual homelab stuff? Portainer, Pi-hole, *arr softwares, a dashboard, etc.
I can’t open the link due to how I’ve configured my browser: is this an integrated board? Could you pull the specifications?
It’s a mini PC (literally just a box). 8/16GB DDR4 RAM, 128/256/512GB 2.5 HDD, processor model options are Intel N5105/N100/N5095/J4125/N95. WIFI5 and Bluetooth 4. 2 USB 2s, 2 USB 3. No USB-C. Windows 11 Pro preloaded (ugh).
But more importantly, how have you configured your browser? It’s a direct link to Aliexpress with no tracking middleware. Have you just blocked shopping sites to stay away from them?
I’m considering using it either as a plex server with transcoding, or for CI/CD work using github actions to do some data pipelines and npm builds.
I don’t exactly remember what I have set up (will have to revisit my config, using Librewolf), but websites like Aliexpress are serious offenders of partial/incomplete redirection requests. Librewolf doesn’t like such behaviour, and neither do I.
