Recommendations and Experience about NUC working with Linux

Hardware
1

Hello Friends

As an option to buy a laptop for developing purposes, a friend did do mention of NUC. My concern and main question:

  • Does NUC work with Linux? It for Fedora and Ubuntu.

To only install Linux I have the secondary accessories:

  • monitor
  • keyboard
  • the pendrive with the iso file

Once installed secondary accessories are going to be removed to use Remmina from a laptop.

Extra questions

  • Does it heat/warm more or less than a laptop?
  • Does it make the noise same or or less than a laptop? (it about the fan)
  • Does it support virtualization to install and run Docker?
  • Do you have some manufacturer of your recommendation? Intel, MSI, Asus?

Thanks for your understanding.

2

Have a look at

To answer some of your questions.

Yes it will be quieter as no fan
Beware intel has chosen to stop support for this product

Intel kills its NUC line, but the tiny PC will live on | PCWorld.

But I have no personal experience using or setting up but it should be like all intel PCs

3

Here is one I would love to have had but it is now sold out.

MINISFORUM NUCXI5 Intel® Core™ i5-11400H/NUCXI7 Intel® Core™ i7-11800H Mini PC – Minisforum

Here is a review of it on YouTube running SteamOS. I’d think Fedora and Ubuntu would run fine too.

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4

Think if I was paying that price then I would prefer

https://www.apple.com/fr/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini/puce-apple-m2-avec-cpu-8-cœurs-et-gpu-10-cœurs-256go

But not for Linux until it’s no longer supported by apple, and as yet not much in the way of Linux for the M1 or M2 or M3 processor

Did convert a older one with intel chip a few years back and upgraded the memory but it was difficult to get into the box to do

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5

Thanks to all for the replies

Yes. I’ve confirmed that Intel stopped and moved to Asus.

Now, according with some videos on YouTube, the most recommendable model about NUC is Intel NUC 13. Some thoughts about that?

Thanks in advance

6

Linus Torvalds, himself, uses an Apple Silicon MacBook to do kernel builds (I think he also uses an AMD Ryzen Threadripper desktop as well).

Me - I’m happy with just UNIX that MacOS ships with on Apple Silicon.

I’m running Red Hat 8 on a “NUC” style PC - a Gigabyte BRIX has dual core celeron and 16 GB DDR3 RAM, M2 SATA SSD (had software issues with the sound chipset on it - never got it working and gave up).

I’ve seen Minisforums ads on Facebook recently - I’d love a pair of Ryzen powered mini “NUC” PCs like those from Minisforums with lotsa RAM to run VMware ESX on - but still too pricey - one of the ads I saw yesterday was for Ryzen 5 “starting at $189” but that’s USD - and I’d want to order a pair of identical ones at the same time… And I’ve seen online recommendations not to go for these for VMware “farms” - but instead second hand mini-PCs from Lenovo of Dell…

2 Likes
7

I like that idea too.

I don’t have any firsthand experience so I can’t really give a good opinion.

8

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the delay.

I watched some videos on YouTube about the best mini-pcs 2023, thus mentioned many times Beelink. Other few mentions go to Geekom. To be honest none result about Lenovo and nothing about Asus, but Asus offers Minipcs in its official page.

9

I was mostly referring to buying 2nd hand :

image
image800Ă—600 36.3 KB

(this pic is from e-bay)
You can get ones with i5 or i7 and 8 or 16 GB of RAM with an SSD… I was mostly interested in i7 variants to run ESXi on…

1 Like
10

I meant about some mention in YouTube about the Mini-pc recommendation reviews, Lenovo was not mentioned. One time was mentioned Dell or HP - but the video is old.

As usual, thanks for the feedback :beer:.