2y ago

Hey guys, I have a thin client sitting in my closet. Any suggestions on what I can do with it?

I'm not going to network anything. It needs to be flashed or whatever to reset it. Can it be used as a storage device, or maybe an emulator box? I'm clueless over here. Any advice and suggestions would be great. Thanks!

25 comments

Perhaps you could share what is the model of your thin client? So we can get a grasp of what we’re dealing with.
Good starting points: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/
- Oh man, I'm that guy arnt I? Lol sorry.
  She's a dell, ZxOQ Wyse.
  I'm checking that link out, very cool
  
  https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/z/zx0q/
You could use that machine as your home server. It would open up a lot of possibilities. Sync your phone contacts and calendars, backup all your systems, store/stream media, host your own clousldserver, your own Internet messenger server for family and friends (snikket for example). Host a Minecraft server for the little ones or whatever comes to mind.
- That's what I do. I bought a thin client last year, because Raspberry Pi 4s were unavailable to me. So I (fortunately) bought a thin client and got into Proxmox. I have the following containers running on the machine (that i can think of right now):
  Nextcloud (files, notes, contacts, calendars)
  Jellyfin (media streaming)
  Pi hole
  docker host (with home assistant, traefik as reverse proxy for everything, anything else i want lol)
  gitlab instance and kubernetes cluster (implemented in three containers, which is just for learning purposes)
  Edit: some of the thing i want to do in the future:
  paperless-ngx (server that a scanner can send files to so your pc doesn't have to be powered on i believe)
  actual budget (budgeting)
  mediawiki / kiwix (hosting wikipedia dumps)
  some other dashboard than heimdall for links to all my services
  a vpn i can log into from outside of my home network (used to have pivpn on my spare raspberry pi, but want to have it as a container)
  Hope i got you some ideas (:
  
  I don't know about any of those things. Thank you for listing then so I can look into them.
Pi hole
- Eh I don't need a device just to block ads. Thank you for the suggestion though!
I've got a wyse 3040 with Ubuntu 22.04 lts running 24/7 just running pihole to block network adverts.
Then a wyse 5070 with a 256gb m2 ssd using windows 10 for my plex server and transferring files from my seedbox
Both work great with zero issues. Both in the frontroom and as no fans in them totally silent.
I was tempted to use one for emulation but don't really need anything my current rasp pi 4 can do.
You could use that machine as your home server. It would open up a lot of possibilities. Sync your phone contacts and calendars, backup all your systems, store/stream media, host your own clousldserver, your own Internet messenger server for family and friends (snikket for example). Host a Minecraft server for the little ones or whatever comes to mind.
HomeAssistant should works great on this device. If you have a bunch of smart devices from different brands and want to consolidate them into a single local system, give HomeAssistant a go. There should be plenty of resource left to run pihole/Adguard as well.
I'm not sure if the GPU is fast enough to run the Steam Link client, but if it does, you can hook it to your tv so you can stream your PC games into the tv when needed.
You can also hook it into a TailScale network and set it as an exit relay so you can have a VPN from your phone/laptop that redirect all internet traffics through your home network. Very useful when you want to secure your connection when using public WiFi in a hotel or cafe.
Try running a fediverse app instance, Lemmy, Pleroma, peertube, owncast or something like that.
For example you could create an online tv channel joining together owncast and your movie/tv series collection
you should selfhost lemmy

25 comments