4 ms·

> a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux Do you remember the name of the product?

by slig 11mo ago

iam-TJ 11mo ago
Two devices I use - both running Debian, and both being open-source hardware to some degree or other: PC Engines APU2, AMD x86_64, 4-core, 4GiB, 3x Gigabit Ethernet, 3 x mini PCIe, SIM slot, USB 3, Serial, SATA ports. Mine has dual band WiFi in one mPCIe, SSD in another. Turris Mox, Marvel aarch64. This can expand via plug and go via a range of extension modules. I've got one with 25 Gigabit (3 x 8-port modules) Ethernet, 1 x SFP, 5 x USB3, Wifi, Serial.
- placatedmayhem 11mo ago
  Just a heads up that PC Engines is winding down. The chip they use in the APU2 is EOL, and they've decided to shut down altogether. https://pcengines.ch/eol.htm https://pcengines.ch/eol.htm
  - echelon 11mo ago
    Wildly ironic that an EU company doesn't ship to the EU. Regulatory compliance shouldn't be hard. The idea is to quell negative externalities, not to shut off innovation itself. > Because of unbelievably bureaucratic recycling regulations, PC Engines will NOT sell directly to end users within the EU. https://pcengines.ch/order.htm https://pcengines.ch/order.htm > EU - a single market ? > Far from it, there are separate registration and recycling schemes for each of the 28+ EU member jurisdictions (and even a few of their provinces). What part of COMMON MARKET was so hard to understand for EU lawmakers ? Since there is no single registration available, and separate registration would involve mindboggling complexity, bureaucracy and costs, we do not sell to EU end users until the EU gets their act together. Please order from EU based distributors, or as a business customer. > Business customers are expected to meet their obligations by registering in the EU countries they sell in. https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm
    - ttkari 11mo ago
      Being based in Switzerland, which is not a member state, PC Engines is not an EU company.
    - oskarkk 11mo ago
      And in the end, 90% of people will throw it in the trash with everything else. I'm actually in the other 10%, but I live in the middle of a big city where I have electronic waste container like 300m away. Btw, that's an awful website. I like simple minimalistic websites, but some people confuse "simple" with "give literally 0 fucks about the reader" and then I have 50-word long lines to read on my 32" monitor. Just put something like {max-width: 1200px; margin: 0 auto;} on the body at least.
      - mr_toad 11mo ago
        You’re lucky. For people without cars anything other than curbside recycling is usually a nightmare. Ironically.
        oskarkk 10mo ago
        Yeah, that was my point, it's easy for me, but that's not the case for most people in the country. And I guess that most people living near me don't think about putting electronics in the dedicated container anyway, even if that container is near them.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - hulitu 11mo ago
        > And in the end, 90% of people will throw it in the trash with everything else. And if they don't, the "recycling" company will do it. Reuse is dead.
    - aruggirello 11mo ago
      > Wildly ironic that an EU company doesn't ship to the EU. Switzerland is not part of the EU in this timeline... But their rant sounds very much like an excuse, the WEEE is in effect at least since 2021: "All EU Member States are required to adopt the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive 2012/19/EU, which sets rules for the collection, treatment, and recycling of electronic waste. However, some countries were granted an extension until August 2021 to meet the collection targets due to infrastructure limitations, including Bulgaria, Czechia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia" - courtesy Google AI overview
bitwize 11mo ago
Qotom is a good chinesium brand for small cheap fanless multi-NIC PCs: https://qotom.net https://qotom.net
- scubbo 11mo ago
  +1, have had 10/10 experience with my Qotom - in fact I had to look up the brand to be sure that was what I had. Forgettability (due to reliability) is exactly what you want in router hardware.
denkmoon 11mo ago
I like protectli boxes. x86, low power, coreboot options, lots of network interfaces. The apus everyone recommends (myself included) are no longer available :(
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
CWuestefeld 10mo ago
Not the poster you're responding to, but... I'm running OPNSense on a GMKtec G9 (a N150-based NUC with dual 2.5Gbps NICs), and a cheap managed switch. All-in, you can get it today for well under $300. Even that is rather overpowered for running my house. The toughest component to pin down was a mesh wifi system that supports tagging VLAN segments. That's almost exclusively enterprise territory, so it's hard to find something affordable.
- necovek 10mo ago
  Is there a mesh wifi system that can run open source firmware? I imagine that might be the best bet for VLAN tagging too in the "affordable" sense too.
  - CWuestefeld 10mo ago
    Not that I'm aware of, and I suspect that the whole idea of mesh radio is necessarily so closely tied to the specific hardware that for this to be practical, there's have to be some canonical physical implementation available for developers to program to. For what it's worth, what I settled on is EnGenius's FitXpress products. But I'm not necessarily recommending that, I'm a bit ambivalent to it. Within its normal operational envelope it works well, but its range is far lesser than the TP-Link device I replaced, and rebooting one of the WAPs in the mesh takes seemingly forever (like, 10 minutes!).
ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
Also not the OP, but I use a NanoPi M5 for my home router. I've got OpenWRT (technically FriendlyWRT, but it's the same) running on it with Docker for running NgINX and PiHole. https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=309 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...

> a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux Do you remember the name of the product?

by slig 11mo ago

> a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux Do you remember the name of the product?

iam-TJ 11mo ago

Two devices I use - both running Debian, and both being open-source hardware to some degree or other: PC Engines APU2, AMD x86_64, 4-core, 4GiB, 3x Gigabit Ethernet, 3 x mini PCIe, SIM slot, USB 3, Serial, SATA ports. Mine has dual band WiFi in one mPCIe, SSD in another. Turris Mox, Marvel aarch64. This can expand via plug and go via a range of extension modules. I've got one with 25 Gigabit (3 x 8-port modules) Ethernet, 1 x SFP, 5 x USB3, Wifi, Serial.

placatedmayhem 11mo ago
Just a heads up that PC Engines is winding down. The chip they use in the APU2 is EOL, and they've decided to shut down altogether. https://pcengines.ch/eol.htm https://pcengines.ch/eol.htm
- echelon 11mo ago
  Wildly ironic that an EU company doesn't ship to the EU. Regulatory compliance shouldn't be hard. The idea is to quell negative externalities, not to shut off innovation itself. > Because of unbelievably bureaucratic recycling regulations, PC Engines will NOT sell directly to end users within the EU. https://pcengines.ch/order.htm https://pcengines.ch/order.htm > EU - a single market ? > Far from it, there are separate registration and recycling schemes for each of the 28+ EU member jurisdictions (and even a few of their provinces). What part of COMMON MARKET was so hard to understand for EU lawmakers ? Since there is no single registration available, and separate registration would involve mindboggling complexity, bureaucracy and costs, we do not sell to EU end users until the EU gets their act together. Please order from EU based distributors, or as a business customer. > Business customers are expected to meet their obligations by registering in the EU countries they sell in. https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm
  - ttkari 11mo ago
    Being based in Switzerland, which is not a member state, PC Engines is not an EU company.
  - oskarkk 11mo ago
    And in the end, 90% of people will throw it in the trash with everything else. I'm actually in the other 10%, but I live in the middle of a big city where I have electronic waste container like 300m away. Btw, that's an awful website. I like simple minimalistic websites, but some people confuse "simple" with "give literally 0 fucks about the reader" and then I have 50-word long lines to read on my 32" monitor. Just put something like {max-width: 1200px; margin: 0 auto;} on the body at least.
    - mr_toad 11mo ago
      You’re lucky. For people without cars anything other than curbside recycling is usually a nightmare. Ironically.
      - oskarkk 10mo ago
        Yeah, that was my point, it's easy for me, but that's not the case for most people in the country. And I guess that most people living near me don't think about putting electronics in the dedicated container anyway, even if that container is near them.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - hulitu 11mo ago
      > And in the end, 90% of people will throw it in the trash with everything else. And if they don't, the "recycling" company will do it. Reuse is dead.
  - aruggirello 11mo ago
    > Wildly ironic that an EU company doesn't ship to the EU. Switzerland is not part of the EU in this timeline... But their rant sounds very much like an excuse, the WEEE is in effect at least since 2021: "All EU Member States are required to adopt the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive 2012/19/EU, which sets rules for the collection, treatment, and recycling of electronic waste. However, some countries were granted an extension until August 2021 to meet the collection targets due to infrastructure limitations, including Bulgaria, Czechia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia" - courtesy Google AI overview

bitwize 11mo ago

Qotom is a good chinesium brand for small cheap fanless multi-NIC PCs: https://qotom.net https://qotom.net

scubbo 11mo ago
+1, have had 10/10 experience with my Qotom - in fact I had to look up the brand to be sure that was what I had. Forgettability (due to reliability) is exactly what you want in router hardware.

denkmoon 11mo ago

I like protectli boxes. x86, low power, coreboot options, lots of network interfaces. The apus everyone recommends (myself included) are no longer available :(

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

CWuestefeld 10mo ago

Not the poster you're responding to, but... I'm running OPNSense on a GMKtec G9 (a N150-based NUC with dual 2.5Gbps NICs), and a cheap managed switch. All-in, you can get it today for well under $300. Even that is rather overpowered for running my house. The toughest component to pin down was a mesh wifi system that supports tagging VLAN segments. That's almost exclusively enterprise territory, so it's hard to find something affordable.

necovek 10mo ago
Is there a mesh wifi system that can run open source firmware? I imagine that might be the best bet for VLAN tagging too in the "affordable" sense too.
- CWuestefeld 10mo ago
  Not that I'm aware of, and I suspect that the whole idea of mesh radio is necessarily so closely tied to the specific hardware that for this to be practical, there's have to be some canonical physical implementation available for developers to program to. For what it's worth, what I settled on is EnGenius's FitXpress products. But I'm not necessarily recommending that, I'm a bit ambivalent to it. Within its normal operational envelope it works well, but its range is far lesser than the TP-Link device I replaced, and rebooting one of the WAPs in the mesh takes seemingly forever (like, 10 minutes!).

ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago

Also not the OP, but I use a NanoPi M5 for my home router. I've got OpenWRT (technically FriendlyWRT, but it's the same) running on it with Docker for running NgINX and PiHole. https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=309 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...