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Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

jeffgeerling.com

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm probably in the target market for this. I have a board using Linux on an Arm v9.2 chip. It'd be nice to run unit tests with exactly the same binaries and compiler settings. The actual boards are a bit expensive and unavailable for CI purposes (vs HIL). Graviton isn't v9.2. QEMU doesn't support v9.2. This does. Probably won't end up buying this, but it's not hard to imagine a small number of other people w…

This, basically - if you target embedded, automotive, mobile (Android, perhaps), then having good native machines supporting the latest Armv9 features is helpful, compared to emulating it on another machine, or running stuff in the cloud. Like I said, a niche, but not one that's nonexistent. I know Minisforum was hyping the Android angle a bit, though in my small amount of mobile app dev, I was happy enough doing tha…

Ironically, the most Linux on ARM I have experience with is from a VM on my Mac. It wouldn’t be perfect , but it’s pretty good for working with ARM. You aren’t emulating the CPU architecture, but you are running under virtualization.

I’m just thinking that the Mac Mini might also be better for that usecase, even with the virtualization in place. If you need to support a specific processor, you probably want to work with that exact processor. But if you want to use any ARM, a virtualized Linux running on a Mac isn’t a bad option.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#42
post #18
post #2

My minisforum mini PC is dead and useless. I will never, ever recommend anyone to buy a minisforum again. Please do not buy a minisforum. And it wasn't just me. https://old.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1ocvjby/minisforum...

Same here. Did yours have a fan or was it fanless?

It has a fan. I bought it from Amazon and it has been over a year but when I emailed them, I got no response at all.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#43
post #2

My minisforum mini PC is dead and useless. I will never, ever recommend anyone to buy a minisforum again. Please do not buy a minisforum. And it wasn't just me. https://old.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1ocvjby/minisforum...

These Chinese mini PCs are generally quite unreliable.

I have one Minisforum that had the HDMI glitch out periodically and another that would reboot on high MEM load. And the stock SSD died without any warning.

I relegated them to a NAS role and at low loads they’re ok.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#44
post #2

My minisforum mini PC is dead and useless. I will never, ever recommend anyone to buy a minisforum again. Please do not buy a minisforum. And it wasn't just me. https://old.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/1ocvjby/minisforum...

Yeah I don't mind a ~250ish gamble on aliexpress but 500+ minipcs is above my risk tolerance. At that level I'd rather DIY a desktop sized build where I can troubleshoot individual components

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#45
post #40
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't asahi run on the Mac mini? Probably better than it does on a laptop, no peripherals to support

Thunderbolt and DP Alt mode aren’t supported, and there are issues with power management (sleep/wake).

OK, but does that matter much for a home lab?

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#46
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, basically - if you target embedded, automotive, mobile (Android, perhaps), then having good native machines supporting the latest Armv9 features is helpful, compared to emulating it on another machine, or running stuff in the cloud. Like I said, a niche, but not one that's nonexistent. I know Minisforum was hyping the Android angle a bit, though in my small amount of mobile app dev, I was happy enough doing tha…

Ironically, the most Linux on ARM I have experience with is from a VM on my Mac. It wouldn’t be perfect , but it’s pretty good for working with ARM. You aren’t emulating the CPU architecture, but you are running under virtualization. I’m just thinking that the Mac Mini might also be better for that usecase, even with the virtualization in place. If you need to support a specific processor, you probably want to work w…

Using UTM I managed to get a headless server running on the Mac mini that behaved better than the mini did. Eg mounted file servers actually mounted at boot reliably and container startup was controlled (maybe it’s me but desktop docker… ew).

The downside is that it eats into power usage. Even then, I’m averaging just 6.4w over 30 days.

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