Apologies if this post ain’t right for this community! I’m admittedly not interested in self-hosting myself, but I’ve a close buddy who’s wanting to get back to streaming, but rightfully hates Amazon. He’s wanting to self-host with Owncast to do video streaming with his pals, but lives in a very small flat with very little free space - hence the request for a laptop.

Ideally he’s needing something great for video encoding, and Linux friendly to boot. No Windows. Mate’s got a budget of ~£1,000.

If there’s a better community for this lemme know!

  • recursive_recursion [they/them]@programming.devEnglish
    61·
    2 months ago

    with a $1000 budget they might want to consider building a computer as desktops usually provide better performance/per cost rather than buying a $1000 laptop

    • desktop pcs can also be small if a small form-factor like ITX or mini-ITX is chosen (although mini-ITX can be pricey)

    building is incredibly easy as there’s a plethora of tutorial vids online and you’re less likely to get screwed over by an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or retailer

    the fediverse here also has an active community for support c/buildapc@lemmy.world

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
      22·
      2 months ago

      Desktops usually don’t have a focus on efficiency, which is important in a server.

      • recursive_recursion [they/them]@programming.devEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        that is true but for beginners with a $1000 budget who ask about buying laptops to host services

        • I’d usually steer towards pc building as buying a laptop would usually be the worst of all options (which brings me great pain for my customers)
          • and building an actual server can be costly unless you’re buying easily accessible second -hand/used components

        one thing I forgot to mention is that it also heavily depends on an individual’s use cases, restrictions, and preferences

    • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.mlEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      The one caveat to building is if you build a PC and a single component is faulty, you are now responsible for determining which component is to get the RMA done. That can be a big hassle. One time for me it was actually two different components that needed to be replaced by the manufacturers, and that was a pain to figure out.

      • recursive_recursion [they/them]@programming.devEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        that is definitely true however the added benefit is typically a longer warranty range as buying a laptop would typically mean that all components would be sold under a single flat warranty cycle/deadline

        plus even if your computer is borked, you can still take it into a microcenter, memoryexpress, brick-and-mortor retailer to have their technicians figure it out the problem for a cost

        I often have these time vs cost tradeoff discussions with my customers after they’ve been informed on the basics