Turning my Framework laptop into a tiny desktop | Hacker News Reader

Turning my Framework laptop into a tiny desktop

arstechnica.com

134 pointsinterpol_p27 comments

I don't know what I'd use one more machine for, but having the option certainly will be firmly in the "pro" column when considering whether to get a Framework laptop next time, because even if I don't find a use for it, it increases the chance it might be useful for someone else...

A long time ago I put a full desktop tower in my car to run as a headless music player. It was as impractical and terrible as you can possibly imagine, and I loved every second of it. I can easily imagine a Framework repurposed as a headless in-car assistant. I might explore this idea when it comes time to upgrade.

EDIT: Thinking about it, with a couple of Nintendo Switch controllers and a screen, you can make a DIY Steam Deck.

That would be a sight. lol. Pictures?

Unfortunately no, but I guarantee it's one of the mangled beige boxes at the bottom of this photo [0] stuffed behind the drivers side seat and a keyboard in the passenger side.

[0]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hIvRzj39l45E2JyrXXtdubt7my4...

Linus has a video of doing this live at Computex with Framework engineers guiding him. https://youtu.be/iU_iWa9LL_s?t=354

The man next to Linus is not just an engineer, is the CEO of the company. Just wanted to point that out.

Maybe he's the Chief Engineering Officier given that he used to work at Oculus

It's refreshing to see a company follow through on their promised use case. Especially since a lot of devices (home automation bridges, nas, media set tops, etc) are just purpose dedicated computers. I'd love for my next home server to be a laptop upgrade and 3d print away.

I recently did my own case build around a framework motherboard in a retro style https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOAE5c7YXs it worked pretty well and I actually met up with the Framework CEO, Nirav, when I was recently in SF to discuss ways to better enable this type of project. I truly believe they want to support creative re-use.

Really funny project and video!

For a tiny desktop, I've used my lenovo M900 tiny thinkcentre. It's also good as a very capable home server and runs practically silently.

These are great little boxes. Got a few second hand and they are power efficient and quite capable.

I've always wondered what those types of PCs are for, other than enterprise workstations in offices. What do you use your home server for? Serving media?

I've got one in use (it was my father-in-law's desktop PC when he was still alive) as a node in my k8s cluster. It's currently got a couple of Gitlab's microservices, one of Harbor's microservices, ntfy, Nextcloud, coredns, and a couple ephemeral MySQL backup processes running.

But what are those for? Like what applications do you run with then and what are you using them for?

The Gitlab microservices run Gitlab; the Harbor microservice runs Harbor. ntfy and Nextcloud are their own services, and coredns serves DNS to the network. The MySQL backup processes are for small apps I host for myself and for a friend's bar.

General "thing" to ssh into.

Dev box for local development.

File serving.

Home Assistant server.

Testing Container stuff.

I have one (i7-6700T, 32GB RAM) that cost me about $250. Runs proxmox. A few VMs for trying new BSD/linux releases, Plan 9, etc. A Windows VM. A minecraft server. A couple dev/test servers. I have another small PC next to it running stuff like Plex and webhosting that I'd like to containerize and move to a VM on proxmox.

Right now my homelab hosts a MediaWiki instance for personal writing, a couple of instances of Foundry Virtual Tabletop for playing D&D over the internet, and a handful of video game dedicated servers. Most importantly though it's a practice environment for genetal systems administration

The best part is the cat. "If not for sits, why is it made of warm?" is universally applicable.

This is a really nice idea. It's also small enough you could hide it behind the living room TV and it would probably make a nice little media center PC.

This guy on YouTube has some great Framework custom project videos if you are into such things (I am): https://www.youtube.com/c/elevatedsystems

If only they had an anodized black option.... The fact that you have to resort to breaking out the rattle-can or use janky stickers on your $3000+ machine just to have it in the most popular computer color is simply maddening.

I just got a new USB-C monitor that delivers 65W watt. I think something like this would be a wonderful desktop for me and I might just get one for a desktop.

I still have my old 11th gen mainboard and thought about doing this but I don't really have a use case for it sadly.

I have an idea for you:

https://www.lakka.tv/ [0]

Endless hours of nostalgic fun, especially if you invite a colleague from the same generation.

[0] And many others like Batocera.org

Just having a server to back up your data using syncthing? You can install steam os and have some couch gaming experience too..

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