Really? I’ve been using ExpressVPN on my torrent box with an OpenVPN client for years. It’s still working today.

I know they’re not the best, but I’ve been too lazy to switch on that device.

I’m far from an expert and have never setup borg, but I see some possible problems with that config, though I don’t think I see anything that would cause it fail.

• In the environment section of borg, borgmatic, and borgweb, the “BORG_PASSPHRASE” variable is used inconsitently, it either needs to be uncommented in borg or commented out in borgmatic and borgweb.

• Networks: having a single “backup_net” network is less than ideal from a security standpoint. Nginx should probably be in it’s own network (an ipvlan or macvlan network) in addition to the backup_net. backup_net should be isolated to the host that are running borg, while any communication into borg should be routed through nginx on its ip.

TPU works fairly well depending on the application.

I wouldn’t rely on it for high temperature (above 150C) or high pressure/vacuum applications, but for most household applications it’ll hold up fine.

If they’re considering optical media, typical BD-R, while viable, may not be be the best choice. BD-R M-Discs would probably be a better choice for backups. Especially if they’re planning on needing access to the data over a period of decades, which would be potentially useful for familiy photos/videos and critical documents.

They are more expensive, as is the drive needed for them, but not by enough to be out of reach or even unreasonable given the additional durability of the discs.

I’ve tried submitting recategorization requests through the links provided by my workplace on the block pages. The requests have been denied.

If I’m remembering right, it’s a Symantec web filtering solution that we use and they’ve decided that my domain is in the “personal blog” category. Which is a blocked category. Jeff Geerling’s website actually falls under the same category, which also kind of sucks, because I like reading some of the stuff he puts out.

pretty much the only reason I still use Plex is because I like to be able to watch stuff during downtime at work and plex.tv isn’t blocked on the work network while my private domain is.

And no, using a hotspot off my phone on a personal computer isn’t an option, both because the security requirements of my job site prevent us from using personal devices in the main area where I work and because the building itself is a massive concrete structure that blocks most cell signals.

Calibre cant natively strip DRM from ebooks, but there are third-party plugins for it that can and integrate pretty seamlessly into the process of adding the book to your library.

I used it to strip the DRM from all of my Amazon bought ebooks back before they removed the download option.

Might be a bit late on this, but ProxMox doesn’t really handle assigning threads to the e/p cores. That’s handled by the kernel and as long you’re running kernel version 6.1 or greater you should be good on that front.

If you really need to, you can also pin specific VMs to specific cores. So that if you’ve got something that always needs the performance it can always run on the p-cores and things that aren’t as demanding can always run on e-cores.

That said, especially if you’re over provisioning, it’s probably better to let the scheduler in the kernel handle thread assignments.

If I’m reading your example right, I don’t think that would satisfy three either. Three copies of the data on the same filesystem or even the same system doesn’t satisfy the “three backups” rule. Because the only thing you’re really protecting against is maybe user error. I.e. accidental deletion or modification. You’re not protecting against filesystem corruption or system failure.

For a (little bit hyperbolic) example, if you put the system that has your live data on it through a wood chipper, could you use one of the other copies to recover your critical data? If yes, it counts. If no, it doesn’t.

Snapshots have the same issue, because at the root a snapshot is just an additional copy of the data. There’s additional automation, deduplication, and other features baked into the snapshot process but it’s basically just a fancy copy function.

Edit: all of the above is also why the saying “RAID is not a backup” holds true.

I don’t think this meets the definition of 3-2-1. Which isn’t a problem if it meets your requirements. Hell, I do something similar for my stuff. I have my primary NAS backed up to a secondary NAS. Both have BTRFS snapshots enabled, but the secondary has a longer retention period for snapshots. (One month vs one week). Then I have my secondary NAS mirrored to a NAS at my friends house for an offsite backup.

This is more of a 4-1-1 format.

But 3-2-1 is supposed to be:

• Three total copies of the data. Snapshots don’t count here, but the live data does.

• On two different types of media. I.e. one backup on HDD and another on optical media or tape.

• With at least one backup stored off site.

I can’t speak to AI performance, but given you’re stated goal of lower idle power consumption, I’d go with the 14900K, not the KS as you have listed.

Reason being the $250 price difference between the two, when the KS is just a slightly higher binning of the K with an additional 200MHz on the boost clocks. With that higher boost being something you’re unlikely to practically see without a substantial and robust cooling system, I don’t think it’s worth the extra money.

The reason I’d go with the K over the 10940X is the lower limit on it’s power consumption. The E cores are very efficient and can down clock substantially meaning it idles at really low power. The 10940X doesn’t have that benefit.

Beyond that, I’d say look at IPC, per thread, per max sustainable clock of each core, to get a general out look on performance.

Note: all of the above assumes we’re working within your listed options. My actual recommendation would be an AMD 7800x3d or 9800x3d.

Is there a link to the code? I know I could probably search for it, but if you’re going post about the code being public you could at least include a link to it.

Unless you have a commitment to only using open source software, I’d recommend Plex over Jellyfin. Mostly because I’ve found the client software for Jellyfin to be lacking, especially on AppleTV.

For the issues with the GoogleTV, you mention that it’s on WiFi, would it be possible to use a wired connection or get another set top box for it? Some TVs have the WiFi antenna behind the screen causing interference, so even though other devices get a strong signal the TV doesn’t.

Also, how’s the hardware on your server? Is the CPU powerful enough or do you have a GPU for transcoding? Also, is the server on WiFi or wired?

It’s worth noting that a lot of settop boxes have limited codec support, which might be forcing transcoding even if everything should otherwise support direct play.

Any reason you can’t use a locally hosted VPN? That would be my solution for something like this. Either use tailscale or use a wireguard VPN and a dynamic DNS service.

Later on I might consider adding some PiKVMs in order to be able to more safely reboot/troubleshoot/access BIOS.

I’m currently using this. It doesn’t appear to have a way to auto import a list of subscriptions. But it fits all of OPs other requests. It also has a jellyfin add on to import the videos into a library there with title and thumbnail.

Something I only saw mentioned in a somewhat snarky comment in this thread (apologies if I missed it elsewhere) is that Windows has the option to do a full system image backup.

If you have an external hdd or a nas, from the Windows Backup applet in control panel (not settings) you can create a system image that will contain a full backup of your C: drive and, optionally other drives in your system. You can then restore that backup from the recovery options in your windows install media.

For the windows install media, I’d recommend using the windows media creation tool to create a usb installer on a separate usb key from your Linux installer and then setting it aside just in case. Trying to create windows install media from within Linux is, while not impossible, difficult.

Obviously, you should do all of this before committing to installing Linux to disk. Most Linux install media also functions as a live Linux environment from which you can try things out and see if things will work for you.

This is some good advice. I’d add two caveats though: - For learning the distro’s package manager, while I’d say it’s definitely good to learn it (and do so early on), I’d also say beginners should probably stay away from the command line version of it unless it’s absolutely needed. - For running commands from random websites rather than a blanket prohibition, I’d say don’t do it unless you can confidently say you understand what the command will do and are willing to take the risk that you’re wrong.

Bookworm, Trixie, and Sid all currently support a total of 10 different architectures.

And looking through the Wikipedia article for Debian’s version history, most of the dropped architectures were functionally obsolete when they were dropped, or like the Motorola 68000, when support was added. (notable exceptions being IA-64 which was dropped 4 years before intel discontinued it, SPARC which is still supported by Oracle, and PowerPC.)

Unless you’re using one of the more recent Win11 builds, where you won’t be able to finish OOBE without an internet connection unless you had the foresight to patch the installer beforehand.