Homelabs

Alright, I've decided

I want to replace the Pi on my desk with the new Mac Mini 

I love having a bunch of small apps or services being run from my desk and it just feels like the next level of power. 

For $600, is there something else you might recommend that has similar specs? Particularly the silicon and how it affects performance

Full Stack Dev | Head of Developer Relations at /pinata | Technical Writer | Tinkering with everything | stevedylan.dev/links

I want to believe you won't be able to beat the performance per dollar afforded by the Mac Mini; it's just so well optimized.

The biggest tradeoffs are the lack of replaceable components and having to largely stick to macOS. There's the Linux distro that runs on the Apple Silicon chips, but personally I'd want a fork that is more proxmox like and is just a dedicated hypervisor instead of general operating system. Probably many years away from that, if even.

I think it's a great buy honestly. Any Mac mini has a great place in a home lab, I would just maximize RAM to keep it open for docker containers + running LLMs.

Personally I feel silly for buying a refurbed M2 mini a few months ago to do some mining and it ended up not working out at all. I'll be lucky if I get a few hundred dollars for it back if I decide to trade in 😅

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