Page revised/updated for 2021 and the acquisition of an Intel NUC 11. 500 GB SSD and 32 GB ram

Purpose is experimentation and gradual replacement of my Mac Pro 2008 once it gives in (13 years and counting)

Linux: Gentoo (what else?)

USE="gtk gnome qt5 alsa dvd wayland"
Update: I had serious issues with my first gentoo install, so experimented with Xubuntu
Used Xfce for a while - did not work as expected. Lots of issues with sound cards/pulseaudio
Switched to Gnome/Wayland - Worked great until I ran into inability to run Thunderbird

2021-06-21 : Switched to Gnome/X - Thunderbird worked out of the box

2021-07-06 : Another attempt with Gentoo. Trying a fresh install with the correct clock from the start
Too many issues with circular dependencies and conflicting USE flags, masked packages etc. Took a break from the machine

2021-07-10 : Threw in Gnome/Wayland again
Had some issues with UEFI and Grub, ended up having to call SimplyNuc support, before I figured out the issue.
Root cause was that the UEFI partition booted the SSD which instantly pointed to a currupt kernel via GRUB.
BIOS also gave 0 seconds to enter setup, leading to issues. By physically removing the SSD, I was able to re-enter USB and primary boot option, log in via XUbuntu live CD and reinstall GRUB
Conclusion right now is that XUbuntu/Wayland/Gnome would be OK for some time _IF_ I can get the screens to work as expected.
Without Synergy or equivalent I don't want to permanently lose a monitor to a second physical keyboard/mouse.
I also don't want to have to fiddle with the HDMI audio from two machines (having to change input source on the stereo)

2021-09-27 : After moving to the Akasa Turing chassis, the machine have been running for a few days, full load and passive cooling
If I don't turn the TV's power off (allow it to be in standby), the machine maintains audio settings, so that seems OK. Audio is coming via HDMI and using the little adapter that splits HDMI to HDMI + 3.5mm + digital audio
Also picked up an extra 24" monitor, so it now has a dedicated monitor (HDMI2) + TV (HDMI1). Works well.

2021-10-06 : Machine chugging along nicely, calculating Folding@home. Staying around 65-75c depending on ambient temperature.

2024-02-11 : Machine continues to chug along nicely. Upgraded to Ubuntu 23.10. Used for Docker, LAMP, ML/PyTorch etc. Only odd thing continues to be that I often have to swap between HDMI1 and HDMI2 to get sound working. For some reason the machine keeps swapping the "mapping" between the /dev files for hdmi1/hdmi2 and the physical ports.

2024-08-13 : Running 24.04 LTS, as well as sporadic video.

2025-12-03 : Upgraded to 25.10 from 25.04. Forcefully excluded the new rust coreutils by doing...
sudo apt remove coreutils-from-uutils --allow-remove-essential && sudo apt install coreutils-from-gnu
sudo apt remove sudo-rs && sudo apt install sudo

**** RPI ****

RPIi and analog output
Check the /flash/config.txt file and make sure it contains this line, which enables the analogue jack :

dtparam=audio=on
Enjoy :)
Care to go back ?