Laptops make GREAT Linux Servers 

Most youtubers will install vim editor, just to edit their window manager config files (and that's the best they have ever done). Meanwhile, Brandon comes around spins up a server, installs docker, yatch and other service all in one video and never complains about using nano as his text editor. 🙌

Please post more of these videos. You inspired me and got me thinking of what I can do at home.

One of my younger siblings had a school-issued Android tablet (mid-range arm64 Samsung tablet) , and it ended up sitting in a drawer when no longer needed, I decided to root it, install an Alpine Linux chroot environment so I can use it as a headless Linux server. The battery life can last more than a full day for lightweight server tasks :-D

With redhat distros such as fedora, they reccomened using podman instead of docker. Podman is a drag and drop replacement for docker but doesn't use a daemon meaning containers don't need to be ran as root unlike docker.

This is the video I've been looking for to turn my perfectly good laptop into a server. Thank you!

Brother ... that video gave me way more than I expected it would. I just wanted to watch it out of curiosity and ended up actually setting up a whole ass server. Great stuff man. Definitely will be coming back to watch more of your stuff.

I love how this is straight to the point. Thank you so much for this kind of videos

Fantastic vid! Funnily enough, just a few days ago I started looking into turning an older macbook into a personql server with fedora, but I never knew it had a browser dashboard like that! Great stuff as always

This is really inspiring content, I love how you touched on actually good examples of docker containers. Also I didn't know Fedora Server was so useful, I've dabbed around in Lubuntu on a light weight desktop PC, but seems like I should be using Fedora Server rather, just the cool HTML Dashboard is so much easier to use than trying to remember how to Putty in to my server everytime I wanted to do something. I don't use Linux a lot so have to re-learn it almost everytime.

I've always wondered how people do this! I've heard of using an out-of-date laptop/desktop as a home server plenty of times, but every video on the subject I've found until yours always assumes you already know how to do a bunch of stuff, or know all the Terminal commands, or they just outright skip entire sections. This video has been the _most_ informative I've found on the subject, _and_ you go at a slow enough pace that I feel I could follow along without too much pausing and skipping around to re-play sections. And you explain each and every step in a very methodical, clear and concise way! So _THANK YOU SO MUCH_ for this!!! I have an old desktop just sitting gathering dust that will be _perfect_ for the job! 👍😁

I would love to see more video's on this! Maybe like a little mini series or something. Thanks, I'll be setting this up on my old laptop.

Dude, I've been looking at so many different home server setups, and I even have my own rpi that I have pihole on and has been operating for years. However, I had so many issues just trying to get it running as a docker container. This actually not only showed me an extremely easy way to make that work through yacht, but has also helped me see I have some laptops that I can use to test things instead of trying to virtualize my desktop! Please keep on teaching, your content is easy to follow and is invaluable!

Awesome! Very concise overview of the general process.

Very informative , you speak clearly and calm which is easier to understand , you've given me a weekend project thanks...

thanks for the very well-timed upload!

Really very interesting video. Hoping for more follow-up videos on home server topic.

Thank you!!! I've been dying to try doing this for so long!

Holy shit! This was extremely educative. Thanks Brandon!

This was soo cool to watch. Thanks!

The best tutorial I've seen! Thanks a lot!

Recently started watching your videos. Some of the things that took me over 2 days to solve, you mentioned them in 10 seconds 😅 Wish I had seen these videos earlier. Extremely informative videos for beginners like me. Thank you for the efforts you put in.

A thousand thanks for the amazing 3 part Jellyfin guide and this follow-up guide!

Underrated channel. Awesome work Brandon! 👍🏾

Great video. Inexpensive laptop, great server setup instructions. Love it! Thanks.

Cockpit, the web interface you were using to manage the server, also has a dashboard for managing containers, cockpit-podman

Acabo de terminar de instalarlo paso a paso como lo explicaste! Muchísimas gracias, funciona perfecto! 👌

Man, what a video. Really, this was amazing for someone like me who was no idea how powerful could be self-hosting

Yes! This looks so much more approachable than anything I've seen before. Maybe I'll stop putting off doing this as a personal project now

Really interesting! Hopefully more videos like this one in the future :)

Cracking video! Very useful, thank you.

Very cool, thank you for this!

If you install the Container Management tools for Fedora Server, you get Podman. Podman is a drop-in replacement for Docker and is more closely aligned with Kubernetes.

This is awesome, thanks TechHut.

I managed to get an old Desktop in a tiny tower 300w PSU 1 Core intel but 32GB ram and Its one job is running an Minecraft modded server "all the mods 8" up till now I've been file tranfuring via USB key because I could not get the FTP working. but this video showed me what I was missing, after hours of web searching a random video "recommended" pops up and solves it.. Thank you so much for your effort in making your video as clear as it is. some go sooo fast or skip half the steps. so TYVM PS: I have now subbed :)

Great overview. Thanks!

You forgot to mention that laptops are much more power efficient than desktops from the same time period.

Awesome 🎉🎉🎉. Thanks for great sharing!

With all the soft soft tutorials that exist on YT, yours just created that "light bulb illumination" mont in my head. Thanks for taking the

Great Tutorial. Very detailed and easy to to follow

What a great video. So many RU-vidrs will do a tutorial and will be copying and pasting stuff yet never tell you what it does or why you should do it. This one was spot on ! Thanks, this is the way to learn !

Thanks for the content Brandon. And I do think you should rebrand. Also, more advice you didn't ask for... You should try out a new keyboard layout. Workman, Dvorak, Colemak are great options. I use Colemak DH. There for sure is less stain sticking to the home row much more. Been loving Pop!_OS and Gentoo. All thanks to your help.

Great Video! This helped me alot

13:28 I use the FTP client built into `nemo` because it can edit files directly on the server without needing to save a local copy. It uses the fact that in Linux almost everything has a local filesystem path and edits the files from there. (This avoids the explicit reupload requirement and lets me see the results seconds after hitting Ctrl+S in the software I use to edit the files)

nice vid, running my docker apps on an old hp14 i3-4000m. removed the wifi card and used a mini-pcie to 2 port sata currently for my storage needs.

It kinda depends on what means old to you. If you are having a notebook that's very very old it could be that the batteries are used up and won't hold long enough to survive a possible outage. Screens for servers are more optional and usually used to act in case the connection to the server is not possible. It also depends on how hard the tasks are, in the case that you only need some simple services it would be cheaper to go with a raspberry pi with a battery. But using a notebook as server can reduce waste.

Great video! It inspired me to buy an old thinkbook and finally set up the server I've been thinking about. One small note though - Yacht doesn't seem to play nicely with rootless docker, so people new to servers may want to hold off on making the switch from rootfull to rootless.

I used to use an Asus E-PC (or whatever it was called) and it was awesome. Wasn't powerful at all, but did the basics for a server (Samba, website etc) just fine.

Similar to how I set up my server, although I couldn't work out how to set up the laptop to run off the main power, and not charge the battery at all (as I've read leaving laptops trickle charging for hours can be dangerous) but to just leave it for if the power goes out, so I removed the battery all together and ran it just on the power cord, which worked fine. As for starting up the server I made a Ventoy stick earlier in the year and it's the best thing I have ever done. I loaded as many iso files on it as I could find and liked the idea of trying, and since then have booted every system off that drive with no hassle. Key features for my server: - ubuntu server - Zerotier installed (as my ISP won't allow me to open ports without charging me twice what I currently pay) so I can access my server whilst away from home from any pre-configured devices. - SSH keys (using ssh-keygen -t ed25519) for each device that I would use in the future to access the server - stopped shutting lid from turning off the screen by uncommenting #handlelidswitch, #handlelidswitchexternal, and #handlelidswitchdocked and making them =ignore in the /etc/systemd/logind.conf file (using sudo nano, cntl+o to save, then cntl+x to exit), and finally running sudo systemctl restart systemd-logind.service - installed tlp-rw, locate, open-ssh, and then: - Nextcloud, - Git: clone & manage git repository, - single file php gallery, - unbound dns resolver alongside adguard, - mycroft. - Docker, with Portainer, running SearXNG, libreddit, Invidious, filebrowser, and a few other programmes

Coincidentally, I found your channel from one of your older videos about using a laptop as a server and have been subscribed ever since. I used an old gaming laptop to make my server using UNRAID, and it's been great! All of the perks you mentioned really do matter. On a side note, I have the Acer version of your HP 10" there, and recently upgraded it to run the barebones version of Linux Mint (XFCE I think?)

Love your videos. Keep it up 🙂

Awesome video going to give this a try with macvlans setup.

Love this. I have a pretty powerful gaming desktop that just is not getting used anymore. Tempted to set this up and run plex from it. Or my local server for web development

Holy moly, this video is gold

great video ma man. thank you

nice video. I like the use of docker images. one thing to note, if you are leaving your laptop running 24/7 for a long time, it might be better to remove the battery, and just use the ac charger for power. These batteries some times explode or leak chemicals that can damage your laptop if they are on constant charging mode.

Great video, very informative. Now, Cockpit vs Webmin 😁

I've got a Lenovo T420 that I got off ebay for £30 due to its screen being broken. It serves as an mpd box and a video streaming server for my tv, among other things. I use a raspberry pi3 as an always-on control box on my home network -- it has a simple python http server that allows me to wake and sleep it and basic mpc control via my phone.

Nice video, thanks.

Excellent video ❤

I've installed a truenas server on an old PC at my home, but apart from media consumption there isn't much that I can do with it, and I've been thinking to maybe install an Ubuntu server hoping that would give me much more flexibility, but this looks like a more approachable option. Great video btw.

As always writing a comment to support the channel

doing docker server tutorials is great, i did like the look of tipi server dashboard, only issue with that is the developer has to add the app container support

Been a long time user of Ubuntu server as that's just what I started with. But damn Fedora server looks wonderful - I already use Fedora workstation

That sponsored mouse. Over here in Asia it's called the iClever MD172. The mold looks similar to the MX Master.

another tip for laptop servers, use TLP or similar to limit the charge of the battery lower than 100%. Batteries don't like being charged all the way up all the time. Also it might be useful to enable full-blown hybernation (watch out for the swapfile/partition!) on critical battery level.

Only do this if you have full documentation for the Embedded Controller. The EC is erratic, you can never be sure that it won't randomly shut off the wifi-radio, or throttle the CPU down to minimum MHz right when you need full performance.

I clicked on this because I did a similar thing. I have a cheap HP laptop ($100 used) with an AMD Bristol Ridge A12-9800 processor that's running Nextcloud. It works great for that purpose. I have 7 TB of storage on it (2 TB internal, 5 TB external) and have my whole GOG game library and a couple terabytes of video and audio stored on it. Overall for less than $250 total it's an excellent server.

Wow I have not tried Fedora's server version yet but that web interface looks really great. Open source is an amazing thing. Though one thing with this is that in order for this to work the system needs an HTTP server with this complete website. If you are like me and loves to do everything by terminal, this might not be what you need. Running all HTTP, SSH, FTP and many more services is not my primary choice. The more services you run, the less secure your system is and the more you need to worry about. I just use Arch Linux for my home server, wich works so well for me because I have many systems with it, such that most things go basically the same on every machine. It's a DIY system so that anything that breaks sometimes has also to be fixed by you. Running Arch specifically for a server only would probably not be the best choice though. I would otherwise either choose a very stable distro or possibly BSD system.

In my homelab I have 2 atom notebooks installed and they work flawlessly for my current needs. They consume so little power in comparison to the rest of my setup. They arent speed demons. The fastest transfer speed I was able to get was 10 mbps. Im a Debian guy. One of them is working as a Samba NAS where I store the files I need most of the time. The other is working as a torrentbox with mini dlna enabled so I can watch movies and series I downloaded in my 2 tvs or cellphone. I removed the screen of this one because it was broken and that way I can use a paper tray organizer as a rack.

Perfect video well done.

I actually daily drive a ThinkPad x240 but I decided to buy a thinkcentre m700 (minipc w i3 6300T+8GB) and I got it for £60 Very happy with my purchase, a decent Lenovo 'think' system completely outdoes the competition in quality Vs price

🔥🔥 This is great - you’re a really good educator!!! How can you access your server from the web? (E.g. access your videos from a hotel/ host your own website)

couldn't agree more. laptops are great linux servers. i'm running a celeron n2815 as low power server, with clear linux. it works really well.

That hp mini was my first laptop... I have so many memories of it crashing on windows 7, I'm glad I put Linux on it!

The dashboard is Cockpit. You can install it on almost any distro. Ex for deb: sudo apt install cockpit That's it.

WOW. Could not believe someone was using old laptop as a server like me. I still use ASUS Eee PC T101MT and the only thing I did is replaced HDD with SSD so it feels more responsive. But it still holds up pretty well for my needs - Home Assistant, transmission, Plex, Pi-hole and Portainer to orchestrate all of the above. All runs smooth as butter on latest Manjaro. Was thinking of buying something more powerful, but don't see anything that I would use to use that compute power.

Mini PCs and laptops are all I have ever used. No complaints.

Thank you very much for your key......1000% work :)

Really helpful

nice vid ... good job

Excellent video. If the laptops are of significant age, perhaps upgrade the mechanical HDD to an SSD and get better battery life and response times.

I had that very same (s)TinkPad! Not bad, not good either, but not bad.

I'd even take this a step further - I repaired a laptop and had leftover bits (Thinkpad T420) but it had no functional keyboard or screen (just a dock and the base, memory, HDD, etc.). So I set it up as a headless server but it's off most of the time - I wake it with a WoL packet and use it to perform compression and other tasks (it has a twin-core i5), I then suspend it by sending an MQTT packet that triggers a script to suspend the system. This method lets me maintain use of power powered systems most of the time (Pis) and only firing it up when a task is in need of more beef. It also reduces power consumption to only one kidney per month being sold to the power company.

I had a 25+ year old alarm clock that needed replacing. I looked at what was available, and it was all shit compared to a simple outdated laptop. So I took my old MacBook pro from 2009, installed Arch and turned it into the most advanced alarm clock imaginable.

Wow that does look user friendly

On later laptops there usually is a separate key to bring up the boot menu. On ASUS ROG laptops it's pressing ESC while powering on the laptop. On MSI laptops F11 is the key for that.

did this lately with a laptop that has a broken keyboard works quite well

I love your videos! I have a question about Jellyfin on a server. In the video it looks like you are pulling the movies and shows to the server. Can Jellyfin point to a repository of media on another PC or USB hard drive? The laptop that I want to use for this will not hold that much media. Would I need to attach external USB hard drives to the server? Thank you for your channel!

That video is amazing specially yacht is awesome :)

I used to run Jolicloud on a Dell Mini 9, another of the e-waste mini netbooks

Make sure you setup safe shutdown when the server detects its running on battery power.

I love it! Fedora Server looks awesome. Using a laptop is a great idea for a home server. Great video. Let's Go Brandon!!!

"That's a nice watch you got there, want me to turn it into a web server?" 🤣

Great video. Is it possible to install a system like Odoo on a "laptop server" for an NPO with little or no funding? I like the idea if you have an unstable electricity supply that the laptop still runs until supply is restored. If so, can you make a video please.

Thanks for your videos. What distro would you recommend for someone wanting to explore arch, but is plug and play. Dont want to start from scratch, but would like to have a decent music player, office and be able to save as word or rtf pdf. Be able to play some old school microsoft games. And play with video editing and engineering. Ya im kinda new to linux...

Love Fedora!...have been using it since 2003!...and have never looked back!...I have dabbled in other distros on my old Dell Optiplex?..but my main gear is the Dell XPS 15 inch and my lenovo ThinkPad...one runs Fedora...the other? Pop-OS!....

Brandon, the only guy I know that installs nano on his systems when it's not there by default... I have been liking Lunarvim a lot. It throws me through a loop when I hope from system to system and have to fall back to nano. It rides the bench, but it's always there when you need it to come in clutch.

I actually used to use a netbook with an Atom N450 (I think) as my daily carry. Admittedly I had a 2 CPU, 8 core beast at home!

Hey! I have that first hp mini running lubuntu since her beggining and it works better that any tablet from the same era! For mail and light text editing is awesome. It may be a piece of garbage but it's my lovely piece of garbage! 🤣😅😏😃😁😁 Nice video tough. 😏👌😁

if its really old but low power it might be good enough for a router or firewall function. that's usually completely headless so any cpu can run it.... please use darkmode and darkreader... makes text so much more crips