Earlier this summer, with things from our mid-February move settling down, I decided to pick up a mini pc for the home lab. I didn’t need anything fancy, but I did spend far longer than I honestly care to admit combing through the options online. I knew that of all the lower end options, it had to have an Intel N150 processor. The rest of the features were negotiable. So, for a number of reasons – none of which I will share here, I settled on a BOSGAME E3 Mini PC.
If you’ve been around my socials for any amount of time, you know that I name my stuff. My gadgets and tech gear specifically. I don’t really have a naming scheme, though sometimes it certainly feels like it.
I spent a good amount of time coming up with names, but none of them seemed to fit. It’s not a large device, that much is obvious. It sat on the corner of my desk, almost blending in to the chaos (this was pre desk reset), just loafing around. That was it!
Loaf is never going to be the powerhouse in my home lab, but that’s not why I got it. I wanted an obvious step up from Gadget, but a newer generation rpi never seemed like the right fit.
Now, I have two decently spec’d gaming rigs, both fully capable of running a virtual machine or two. Even my MacBook Pro could handle such a task. But I didn’t want to virtualize a playground on any of those, and I had long enough ago retired my Thinkpad with my parents, so the itch for a dedicated Linux machine was getting stronger.
Having dedicated hardware that is capable of running not only whatever flavour of Linux I fancy but even Windows 11 should I want it (narrator: they don’t) means I finally have a box, that takes up hardly any space, that I can break without consequences.
And because I know some of you are curious, Loaf is currently running EndeavourOS Mercury.