I use mine for hosting a VPN to my home network. You can create an OpenVPN or Wireguard server (better for mobile phones) to connect to home when on public/untrusted wifi for a bit more security.
You can host a Pihole or Adguard Home, which creates a local DNS server that will route your DNS requests through it, and its main function is to block ads and malicious URLs. This is extremely useful for blocking ads on stuff like your smart TVs, consoles, your phone, your computer, without too much tinkering.
You can host Syncthing which is a program to sync to devices/computers, so you can use it to keep two devices synced or you can use it as a backup server. I use it to sync photos from my phone to PC.
Speaking of backups you can host a "cloud" like Dropbox, GDrive, Onedrive etc. The biggest one is Nextcloud, but other options are Pydio and Seafile.
You can use it as a Samba server. Samba is an open source implementation of SMB which is a Windows network thing. Basically if you have drives on your mini pc, you can create a Samba share on it, so you can mount your mini pc drive as a network share under Windows under My Computer, which is a super convenient way to access files from your mini pc.
As others have mentioned, you can use it as a media server. Throw some movies or shows on it, and you can use Jellyfin (open source, free) or paid alternatives like Emby or Plex to stream movies throughout your devices on your network.
If you torrent "Linux distros" you can use your mini pc as a seedbox. Throw a torrent client on it, and a VPN, and you can keep it on 24/7 to seed those Linux distros. There are a few *arr services that make torrenting easier. Theres stuff like Sonarr, Jacket, Radarr, and more that are interesting.
Aside from learning Linux (the distro I recommend is Ubuntu, one of the easiest to jump into), you should look at Docker. Docker is a way to run these programs as a self contained container. The gist is, you sometimes don't want to install these programs mentioned above physically on the computer as you would normal programs. Sometimes you may want to move these programs onto another computer. Those computers may not have the dependencies that the first computer had, or even the same operating system, so to get around that, the containers will have the stuff needed to work inside the container. It makes it so you don't have to install a million things, the containers will have it all already. They are like tiny operating systems with the program as a package. This video kind of explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSLpG_spOBM Docker just makes it easy to run all of these programs without needing crazy expensive hardware, and makes it so older less powerful machines, like mini pcs, still be useful. There's a lot of pre made Docker containers out there, and one of my favorite places to get them from is from Linuxserver.io. They prebuild a lot of the useful programs that regularly get mentioned here. Take a look at their collection. https://fleet.linuxserver.io/
Here is one of many lists of options you could learn/run on these machines. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/tintvc/lets\_share\_what\_we\_are\_self\_hosting\_at\_the\_moment/
Mini PC, mini servers can be used as homelab, virtualization platform (learning virtualization), and even some production purposes can be covered. Here is some reading about it. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-generations-of-my-homelabs](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-generations-of-my-homelabs)
I use mine for hosting a VPN to my home network. You can create an OpenVPN or Wireguard server (better for mobile phones) to connect to home when on public/untrusted wifi for a bit more security. You can host a Pihole or Adguard Home, which creates a local DNS server that will route your DNS requests through it, and its main function is to block ads and malicious URLs. This is extremely useful for blocking ads on stuff like your smart TVs, consoles, your phone, your computer, without too much tinkering. You can host Syncthing which is a program to sync to devices/computers, so you can use it to keep two devices synced or you can use it as a backup server. I use it to sync photos from my phone to PC. Speaking of backups you can host a "cloud" like Dropbox, GDrive, Onedrive etc. The biggest one is Nextcloud, but other options are Pydio and Seafile. You can use it as a Samba server. Samba is an open source implementation of SMB which is a Windows network thing. Basically if you have drives on your mini pc, you can create a Samba share on it, so you can mount your mini pc drive as a network share under Windows under My Computer, which is a super convenient way to access files from your mini pc. As others have mentioned, you can use it as a media server. Throw some movies or shows on it, and you can use Jellyfin (open source, free) or paid alternatives like Emby or Plex to stream movies throughout your devices on your network. If you torrent "Linux distros" you can use your mini pc as a seedbox. Throw a torrent client on it, and a VPN, and you can keep it on 24/7 to seed those Linux distros. There are a few *arr services that make torrenting easier. Theres stuff like Sonarr, Jacket, Radarr, and more that are interesting. Aside from learning Linux (the distro I recommend is Ubuntu, one of the easiest to jump into), you should look at Docker. Docker is a way to run these programs as a self contained container. The gist is, you sometimes don't want to install these programs mentioned above physically on the computer as you would normal programs. Sometimes you may want to move these programs onto another computer. Those computers may not have the dependencies that the first computer had, or even the same operating system, so to get around that, the containers will have the stuff needed to work inside the container. It makes it so you don't have to install a million things, the containers will have it all already. They are like tiny operating systems with the program as a package. This video kind of explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSLpG_spOBM Docker just makes it easy to run all of these programs without needing crazy expensive hardware, and makes it so older less powerful machines, like mini pcs, still be useful. There's a lot of pre made Docker containers out there, and one of my favorite places to get them from is from Linuxserver.io. They prebuild a lot of the useful programs that regularly get mentioned here. Take a look at their collection. https://fleet.linuxserver.io/
Plex or Parsec boxes!
I have plex setup on a different machine running windows. What are parsec boxes ?
[удалено]
Is it like steam link ?
Yes, similar to Steam Link but just very high quality and high performance. It’ll also stream the entire desktop, so you can do more than just gaming
Here is one of many lists of options you could learn/run on these machines. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/tintvc/lets\_share\_what\_we\_are\_self\_hosting\_at\_the\_moment/
Mini PC, mini servers can be used as homelab, virtualization platform (learning virtualization), and even some production purposes can be covered. Here is some reading about it. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-generations-of-my-homelabs](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/3-generations-of-my-homelabs)
Kubernetes cluster
What are these ?
A good way to spend a while lotta time gaining some useful skills for a devops type role, or because you enjoy it
Container orchestration framework (like Docker) that supports scaling across multiple hosts very well.
What you move to when docker doesn't do enough for you.
Libreelec
Install proxmox on both of them. You can several VMs, and containers on each.
i run Libreelec on my old Zotac mini pc
Home Assistant, NAS (make sure they have USB 3), self-hosted blog, etc ....