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The NUC has full Linux support out of the box. You can configure them with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB-512GB SSD for $400-$500, especially if you go for the old mod

The NUC has full Linux support out of the box. You can configure them with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB-512GB SSD for $400-$500, especially if you go for the old model (Gen 6 Skylake instead of Gen 7 Kaby Lake, not much has changed)

pmorici 10y ago
Are you sure? I have one and the wifi definitely doesn't work out of the box and there are a couple other annoyances the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. I haven't spent time to investigate but that isn't the definition of "works out of the box"
- windexh8er 10y ago
  Since there are a number of iterations of NUC I suppose you could have one that doesn't. However most of the Intel wireless chipsets are some of best supported. I own two Intel NUC and two Gigabyte Brix machines - all of them were specifically selected to run Linux and all of them work flawlessly out of the box under any major distro. One of my favorite desktop machines is the Intel Skull Canyon (NUC6i7KYK). It has an i7-6770HQ, supports 32GB of RAM (all of the newer, i.e. Skylake and greater do) and the real difference I wanted was the fact that it has two M.2 slots AND a true Thunderbolt 3 port (for support of the Razer Core external GPU enclosure). Highly recommended if you want a performant machine in a small form factor with multi-monitor support and flexibility given it's size. I only hope that Gigabyte continues to make the Brix line, especially when Ryzen drops from AMD. As much as I like the Skull Canyon I'd love to drop Intel from a pure privacy standpoint.
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    > I'd love to drop Intel from a pure privacy standpoint. Are you referring to the Intel Management Engine? I was under the impression that AMD was as bad if not worse than Intel in that regard: https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd Or is Ryzen expected to be better in that regard?
    - windexh8er 10y ago
      TBH I hadn't looked at AMD in that regard for quite some time since they hadn't been on my short list. Thanks for pointing this out, likely doubtful Ryzen will be any different unfortunately. sigh
      - peatmoss 10y ago
        I feel like AMD is missing an opportunity here. They aren't able to compete completely with Intel on performance now, and probably won't ever. Ryzen should be better, but I doubt they'll achieve parity with Intel. If AMD wanted to compete on something they could compete by being the chip provider that was security-friendly. The failed Talos secure workstation proved that at least some people are willing to spend lavishly on truly open, user-controlled hardware. My supposition is that there could be pretty solid demand if the price point weren't ~$10k.
- devdoomari 10y ago
  > the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. uhm... look into power settings? That's common for most os.
  - washadjeffmad 10y ago
    No it isn't, and you shouldn't accept that as a standard behavior.
  - slrz 10y ago
    I guess "locking up" is not intended to describe the kind of lockup you can fix by entering your login password.
- caleblloyd 10y ago
  The Intel WiFi chips they use (I think it's 8260 on the Skylake models) is supported by recent kernels such as the one shipped with Ubuntu 16.04. They also list Linux support on their website. We have a handful of Broadwell (5th gen) and Skylake (6th gen) NUCs running at work using Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04. Everything works great including WiFi.
- rickyc091 10y ago
  I've been tinkering around with it since the last two iterations. The primary reason it might not have worked out of the box is probably due to the bios not being updated to the latest version. Otherwise, I've installed Ubuntu on over a dozen of these machines for a project without any trouble. If you try to swap the SSD from one NUC box to another, you might run into some trouble though... the bootloader needs to be repaired.
vetinari 10y ago
The Skull Canynon has not yet an successor, it is still the most powerfull NUC and is still based on Skylake. No Kaby Lake has an Iris Pro yet.
zuzun 10y ago
I bought a Skylake NUC and I will buy more NUCs in the future but using them with Linux isn't all rosy: - Getting the NUC to wake up after sleep is a hit or miss. Sometimes I can still SSH into it, but I never manage to get the display back on. - One in every 200 boots the fan just doesn't start. Since the fan isn't very loud, some people might not notice this, which might or might not be a problem. - One in every 1000 boots the fan seems to be the only thing that starts. - Sometimes Wifi doesn't come up or goes down. Getting it back up is impossible. - Getting into BIOS is annoyingly difficult. I had some more problems but I think they were my monitors fault (looking at you, Dell). I've been using Linux since forever now and I never had so many problems with any machine.
- windexh8er 10y ago
  Which model? I have NUC6i3SYH and NUC6i7KYK, neither exhibit any of the characteristics you've described. I've used Arch and Ubuntu Mate 16.04 on both as well as Windows 10 LTSB and Anniversary editions on the Skull Canyon. The latter is to run some graphics editing software (which is why I wanted dual M.2 slots so I could dedicate physical drives to each OS). If it were really that bad I definitely wouldn't be able to use it as my daily driver. My Dell 5510 on the other hand is a PoS that I've had replaced 4 times now. I won't buy another Dell product because of that and their horrible support.
  - zuzun 10y ago
    NUC6i5SYK and Ubuntu 15.10 and now 16.04 LTS. Since I got the NUC right after its release I was hoping for newer kernels to fix some of these problems, but they didn't.
    - ychombinator 10y ago
      And lack of H.264 encoding in Firefox / YouTube means no smooth HD YouTube playback
      - ndesaulniers 10y ago
kupiakos 10y ago
Do you have any experience running Dolphin on these? I'm trying to replace my just-barely-too-old current system to run Gamecube games.
Shorel 10y ago
Also, Kodi runs great in Ubuntu.

pmorici 10y ago

Are you sure? I have one and the wifi definitely doesn't work out of the box and there are a couple other annoyances the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. I haven't spent time to investigate but that isn't the definition of "works out of the box"

windexh8er 10y ago
Since there are a number of iterations of NUC I suppose you could have one that doesn't. However most of the Intel wireless chipsets are some of best supported. I own two Intel NUC and two Gigabyte Brix machines - all of them were specifically selected to run Linux and all of them work flawlessly out of the box under any major distro. One of my favorite desktop machines is the Intel Skull Canyon (NUC6i7KYK). It has an i7-6770HQ, supports 32GB of RAM (all of the newer, i.e. Skylake and greater do) and the real difference I wanted was the fact that it has two M.2 slots AND a true Thunderbolt 3 port (for support of the Razer Core external GPU enclosure). Highly recommended if you want a performant machine in a small form factor with multi-monitor support and flexibility given it's size. I only hope that Gigabyte continues to make the Brix line, especially when Ryzen drops from AMD. As much as I like the Skull Canyon I'd love to drop Intel from a pure privacy standpoint.
- peatmoss 10y ago
  > I'd love to drop Intel from a pure privacy standpoint. Are you referring to the Intel Management Engine? I was under the impression that AMD was as bad if not worse than Intel in that regard: https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd Or is Ryzen expected to be better in that regard?
  - windexh8er 10y ago
    TBH I hadn't looked at AMD in that regard for quite some time since they hadn't been on my short list. Thanks for pointing this out, likely doubtful Ryzen will be any different unfortunately. sigh
    - peatmoss 10y ago
      I feel like AMD is missing an opportunity here. They aren't able to compete completely with Intel on performance now, and probably won't ever. Ryzen should be better, but I doubt they'll achieve parity with Intel. If AMD wanted to compete on something they could compete by being the chip provider that was security-friendly. The failed Talos secure workstation proved that at least some people are willing to spend lavishly on truly open, user-controlled hardware. My supposition is that there could be pretty solid demand if the price point weren't ~$10k.
devdoomari 10y ago
> the worst being the machine locking up if you let it sit for too long. uhm... look into power settings? That's common for most os.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  No it isn't, and you shouldn't accept that as a standard behavior.
- slrz 10y ago
  I guess "locking up" is not intended to describe the kind of lockup you can fix by entering your login password.
caleblloyd 10y ago
The Intel WiFi chips they use (I think it's 8260 on the Skylake models) is supported by recent kernels such as the one shipped with Ubuntu 16.04. They also list Linux support on their website. We have a handful of Broadwell (5th gen) and Skylake (6th gen) NUCs running at work using Ubuntu 15.10 and 16.04. Everything works great including WiFi.
rickyc091 10y ago
I've been tinkering around with it since the last two iterations. The primary reason it might not have worked out of the box is probably due to the bios not being updated to the latest version. Otherwise, I've installed Ubuntu on over a dozen of these machines for a project without any trouble. If you try to swap the SSD from one NUC box to another, you might run into some trouble though... the bootloader needs to be repaired.

vetinari 10y ago

The Skull Canynon has not yet an successor, it is still the most powerfull NUC and is still based on Skylake. No Kaby Lake has an Iris Pro yet.

zuzun 10y ago

I bought a Skylake NUC and I will buy more NUCs in the future but using them with Linux isn't all rosy: - Getting the NUC to wake up after sleep is a hit or miss. Sometimes I can still SSH into it, but I never manage to get the display back on. - One in every 200 boots the fan just doesn't start. Since the fan isn't very loud, some people might not notice this, which might or might not be a problem. - One in every 1000 boots the fan seems to be the only thing that starts. - Sometimes Wifi doesn't come up or goes down. Getting it back up is impossible. - Getting into BIOS is annoyingly difficult. I had some more problems but I think they were my monitors fault (looking at you, Dell). I've been using Linux since forever now and I never had so many problems with any machine.

windexh8er 10y ago
Which model? I have NUC6i3SYH and NUC6i7KYK, neither exhibit any of the characteristics you've described. I've used Arch and Ubuntu Mate 16.04 on both as well as Windows 10 LTSB and Anniversary editions on the Skull Canyon. The latter is to run some graphics editing software (which is why I wanted dual M.2 slots so I could dedicate physical drives to each OS). If it were really that bad I definitely wouldn't be able to use it as my daily driver. My Dell 5510 on the other hand is a PoS that I've had replaced 4 times now. I won't buy another Dell product because of that and their horrible support.
- zuzun 10y ago
  NUC6i5SYK and Ubuntu 15.10 and now 16.04 LTS. Since I got the NUC right after its release I was hoping for newer kernels to fix some of these problems, but they didn't.
  - ychombinator 10y ago
    And lack of H.264 encoding in Firefox / YouTube means no smooth HD YouTube playback
    - ndesaulniers 10y ago

kupiakos 10y ago

Do you have any experience running Dolphin on these? I'm trying to replace my just-barely-too-old current system to run Gamecube games.

Shorel 10y ago

Also, Kodi runs great in Ubuntu.