External 2.5" HDDs connected via USB for longer term bulk storage and using it as a NAS, a smaller internal NVME SSD for the OS and a larger one (but SATA, so slower) for the directory were torrents go to.

The different drive performances fit my usage pattern just fine whilst optimizing price per GB.

External 3.5" would be cheaper for bulk storage but the 2.5" are a leftover from when I was more constrained in terms of physical space.

Well, the N100 does have a lot more breathing space in terms of computing power, so it’s maybe a better bet for something you want to use for a decade or more, and that remote control I linked to above does work fine, except for the power button (which will power your Linux off but won’t power it back on).

I actually tried an Android TV Box (which is really just and SBC in the same range of processing power as the Pi) for this before going for the Mini PC and it was simply not as smooth operating.

That Mini-PC has enough computing power room (plus the right processing extensions) that I can be torrenting over OpenVPN on a 1Gb/s connection whilst watching a video from a local file and it’s not at all noticeable on the video playback.

Kodi install instructions are here

I don’t use docker, I use lubuntu with normal packages. So for example Kodi is just installed from the Team Kodi PPA repository (which, granted, is outdated, but it works fine and I don’t need the latest and greatest) and just set it up to be auto-started when X starts so that on the TV it’s as if Kodi is the interface of that machine.

Qbittorrent is just the server only package (qbittorrent-nox) which I control remotelly via its web interface and the rest is normal stuff like Samba.

After the inital set up, the actual linux management can be done remotelly via ssh.

That said, LibreELEC is a Linux distro which comes with Kodi built-in (it’s basically Kodi and just enough Linux to run it), so assuming it’s possible to install more stuff in it might be better - I only found out about it when I had my setup running so never got around to try it. LibreELEC can even work in weaker hardware such as a Raspberry Pi or some of its clones.

Also you can get Kodi as a Flatpak which works out of the box in various Linux distros so if you need the latest and greatest Kodi plus a full-blown Linux distro for other stuff you might do the choice of distro based on supporting flatpack and being reasonably lightweight (I actually originally went for Lubuntu exactly because it uses a lightweight Window Manager and I expected that N100 mini-pc to need it, though in practice the hardward can probably run a lot more heavy stuff than that, though lighter stuff means the CPU load seldom goes up significativelly hence the fan seldom turns on and so the thing is quiet most of the time and you only hear the fan spinning up and then down again once in a while even in the Summer).

As for docker, there are a lot of instructions out there on how to install Kodi with Dockers, but I never tried it.

Also you might want to get a remote like this, which is a wireless remote with a USB adapter, not because of the air-mouse thing (frankly, I never use it) but simply because the buttons are mapped to exactly the shortcuts that Kodi uses, so using it with Kodi in Linux is just like using a dedicated remote for a TV Media Box - in fact all those thinks are keyboard shortcuts (that remote just sends keypresses to the PC when you press a button) and they keyboard shortcuts for media players seem to be a standard.

It really depends on what you’re doing with it and on what old PCs you have available.

I have an N100 Mini-PC at home in my living room connected to my TV which is both a home server and a TV-Box using Kodi (I even have a remote for it).

Having modern image and video decoding in hardware is pretty useful when I’m using it as a TV Box (there is zero stutter with it), whilst the rest of the time the thing mostly sits doing some low CPU-intensive server tasks (mainly torrenting and SMB server stuff).

Also, it’s a small box that fits fine on my TV stand without standing out and runs silent pretty almost all of the time.

Further, I don’t have any low power consuming old PCs around - the best are some chunky old notebooks, the rest are old gaming PCs which eat more power idle than the mini PC does at full load - and even the notebooks aren’t that low power as all that.

Mind you, for many years I used an old Asus EEE PC (a very small notebook running Linux) as home file server (with external HDs) and had a separated dedicated hardware TV Media Server box playing files from it, but eventually that PC stopped working and I found out I could just use my Router as a file server.

Last but not least, judging for how long I kept using my TV Media Server boxes (which over almost 2 decades I had 2 different ones and which as dedicated hardware could not easilly be upgraded when new video compression standards came out) 10+ years is definitelly my time-frame for using that Mini-PC.

All this to say that you should consider using old hardware, especially if you have some around and it’s task appropriate (like I did before using an old Asus EEE PC as a home file server), but also take in account what you’re going to do it and consider if new hardware won’t be better over the timespan you will likely be using it and if the being able to get a more task appropriate form factor (like how having a little box-size Mini PC lets me have it in my living room on a TV stand next to my TV and my fiber router) is worth it.

In summary, before you get hardware you should ponder a bit about what you intend to do with it before you decide what to get, don’t be afraid of using stuff you already have and also don’t be afraid to get new stuff if it’s actually justified by hardnosed reasons rather than merely some variant of the “new stuff smell” psychological effect when buying new.

Oh, it’s totally fucked up and I do agree that Europe should proactively work against Dogey America.

My point is that Europe militarily intervening in an American Civil War doesn’t have enough upsides for Europe to offset the downsides.

I was born in Portugal, a country which was back then under a Fascist Dictatorship.

It was a dirt poor European country were things were so bad that it got Food Aid from other countries.

Fortunatelly, there was a Revolution not long after I was born. In the 5 - 10 years after the Revolution quality of life and average wealth in my country went up dramatically.

In my own country, Fascism came to power when the Finance Minister during Republican years who saved the country from Financial Ruin, just captured power and made himself President - so yeah, starting from a very low point Fascism can improve things a bit for a while, but it doesn’t take that many years for it to turn the whole thing into shit and that’s what happenned in Portugal.

Fascists might sometimes cause a little Economic bump if they take over from a very low point (the same happenned with the Nazis in Germany), but it never lasts, and the ones in America are already going at it so ineptly and haphazardously that I bet there’s not going to be any Economic bump.

The Fascists are incompetent as fuck and seriously regressive, so they eventually drag down any nations they take over once the cummulative side effects of their actions have time to work through the system. As America is already in a post-Imperial decay stage, Fascism will just accelerate that decay.

From your own link: “This data set, which includes only official deaths in which identification could be confirmed”

Who did most of the counting and identification? The Gazan Hospitals that Israel blew up.

Corpses shoved to mass graves by IDF soldiers (who have even posted photos and videos of doing it) don’t get counted, much less “identified”. And don’t get me started op those burried under the rubble of bombed buildings, especially once the Israelis started targetting ambulances and rescue services.

That kind of shit is like mid Nazi Holocaust claiming there were no deaths in Auchwitz, since the Nazis didn’t care to keep track of the identity of those they killed hence the count of “official deaths in which identification could be confirmed” was zero.

“The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal”

(Source)

Yeah, I suspect you’re right.

Yeah, right, it’s because you’re wholly apolitical and concerned above all with the plight of Palestinians that under an article about Evidence pointing to Israel’s continued used of Starvation to inflict Genocide on Palestinians you felt the need to explicitly make it about Trump and mentioned no other of the many supporters and enablers of Israel and its Genocide

Go pull the other one.

If you weren’t trying to bring in your pet peeve in American politics you would’ve just said “America” (since the whole fucking political mainstream there are Genocide enablers) or, even better, mention all of the most egregious supporters of Israel and its Genocide: America, Britain and Germany (in all of which, curiously, the whole fucking political mainstream are Genocide enablers).

You’re confusing “not being counted because the Gaza Hospitals were they did the counting were destroyed by Israel” with “not occurring”.

There was a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal about 6 months ago that back then estimated around 200k Palestinian dead even while the official figures remained stuck around the 50k mark since about 3 months into the invasion (when most Hospitals in Gaza were destroyed).

You’re parroting Zionist propaganda and I don’t really know if it’s because you yourself have fallen for it or some other, malevolent, reasons.

(Given that you’re doing this under an article about how Amnesty International gathered evidence that Israel is “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians”, I know which of those two possibilities I would bet on)

They’re activelly destroying Science in the US, pretty much guaranteeing their own fatal weakening in the mid and long term if they did win and ended up controlling North America.

With the notable exception of the US ending up using nukes and causing the end of the World, there is no way Europe would lose more from merely letting present day America eat itself up than it would from militarily intervening in a civil war in the US, because even a win by the Neo Confederates would yield a weakened American in the short term (because of the destruction of a Civil War) and even more in the long term because of their anti-Science stance, and likely braindrain.

(People seriously underestimate the likelihood of rich countries regressing. To give you an example, Argentina used to be the 5th weathiest country in the World and look at them now. America absolutelly would end up regressing, FAST, if the MAGA crowd with the policies it is already practicing gained absolute power).

Not to say that many Americans who aren’t Neo Confederates wouldn’t deserve the help, just saying that pragmatically speaking letting America consume itself would be better for Europe than militarily intervening in an American civil war.

Now, if this was 40 or 50 years ago it would be different, but present day America isn’t a force for good and there being a EU gives Europe enough strength as a team to stand up by itself to powers like China and Russia if they try anything, so there both isn’t all that much good (for the World as a whole) in America to be worth saving and Europe doesn’t actually require American support.

It’s about Russia and it’s militarist expansionism, not about Trump.

For crying out loud, stop trying to score political points in US politics when murdering brown people and helping Israel do so is the ultimate bipartisan subject in the US.

You can find differences between the two “sides” in US politics on some subjects (though often the distance is fag paper thin). but in this they’re on the same side, with at most the only difference being that the Democract establishment would rather Israel was a bit more quiet in their mass murdering.

I started calling this a New Holocaust ever since it became obvious that Israel was trying to starve Palestinians to death.

Oh, from my own experience with upper class Englishmen (granted, only a handful) when living in Britain, Sunak isn’t really a “proper” upper class person in their eyes, especially for those who are Old Wealth as he’s both not White and his wealth doesn’t go back enough generations - it’s pretty hard to get accepted into the English upper class circles even if you did attend one of the posher Public Schools and even when inside there are different “classes” of people.

Very wealthy people really are a petty as the rest, and though most are pragmatic in their choice of actions when their economic interests are at stake, they’ll definitelly follow their own petty impulses when such interest are not really at stake.

I mean, the various very public actions from Elon Musk, from his “pedophile” accusation to the rescuer that refused his wild-ass submarine scheme to rescue the boys in Thailand to his Nazi Salute, show him as a prime example of how the very wealthy can act driven by internal impulses even in ways that go against their best interests.

You see, almost all of the very Wealthy are were they are due to “popping out of the right vagina”, not due to superior behaviour, and this is pretty much “100% of them” when it comes to Old Wealth, so don’t presume they’ll act driven by rationality alone - if the stakes for their own interests aren’t high enough they’ll follow things like their supremacist beliefs just like the “riff-raff”, and really the main difference from the English wealthy when they do this to for example the American wealthy, is that they’ll coach the whole thing in some posh “rationale” rather than be open about their Racial Preferences or the appeal of Supremacism for them (it makes sense that somebody who was born to Wealth will be attracted to the idea that some people are born inherently superior to others and hence are more successful, as that implies that their inherent superiority is the reason for their wealth)

I think the profound contrast between the reaction from the British “Authorities” to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the Israeli Genocide in Gaza, disproves the idea that it’s all about money, especially given that there was a lot more money being made from Russia than can be made from Israel.

I mean, a musician is right now being investigated by the British Police for shouting his desire for death to the invader, genocidal army that’s purposefully mass murdering children - that of Israel - whilst nobody in Britain was ever investigated by police for wanting the death of members of the invading Russian army in Ukraine, even though the latter is barelly targetting civilians and never explicitly children (unlike the former).

Racism, extreme and profound Racism even, is the most reasonable explanation for such a massive disconnect in their reaction to those two different aggressors in proportion to the crimes they’re committing, more so given that a money reason would yield an unbalanced reaction in the very opposite direction.

Exactly.

The problem is those countries were the 19th century colonialist mindset isn “something we fortunately left behind” but instead is alive and well.

They’ll formally apologize, as talk is cheap, and then do nothing further.

And no, I’m not at all kidding or exaggerating: this is THE most common strategy in British Political and Social Elite circles for getting rid of such “problems” when denying it doesn’t work.

Deny it, deny it was a problem, deny it was systemic, apologize and claim it was too long ago and it’s pointless to do anything about it now, is a well travelled multi-step strategy in British politics (THE main strategy, even) to avoid actual consequences for their actions or lack of action.

Certainly the posh ones will tell you they value your input as you scream from the pain due the knife they plunged into your back.