So I acquired a used NUC for having a Linux box...which distro?

May 1, 2019
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Reno, NV
Only linux I have dabbled with was installing Hass.io (I guess now called Home Assistant) and installing the ISO into a repurposed i3 NUC.
I have acquired yet another NUC. Has Windows 10 Pro, 250GB KingFast (never heard of them) SATA drive, bluetooth, wifi, i5-4590 CPU with 8 GB RAM.
I am not exactly sure what the full purpose of this box will be just yet. But I do know I want to relocate Windows Deepstack AI off the Blue Iris machine and learn various linux based programs that seem interesting (proxmox VM's, pi-hole, networking tools, learning dockers and such).
I guess the standard issue is to run latest greatest Ubuntu LTS. But then, many say to take a look at Mint. Then, others say it all depends on what you want to do (which I do not know just yet).
Would it be best to say...Ubuntu Server LTS bascially covers all bases?
Any reason to keep Windows on this thing in a dual-booting setup?
 
No reason to dual boot to windows IMO.

I have run Ubuntu Server on a number of machines but I find that if you just leave it in its out-of-box state then the boot partition fills up within a year. I have no idea how one of the most popular distributions can have a problem like that.
 
No reason to dual boot to windows IMO.

I have run Ubuntu Server on a number of machines but I find that if you just leave it in its out-of-box state then the boot partition fills up within a year. I have no idea how one of the most popular distributions can have a problem like that.
I am just trying not to waste the Windows 10 Pro key :) Who knows if there is a need for one in the future.
Boot partition fills up within a year? What does that mean? I'll have to research that.
 
No reason to dual boot to windows IMO.

I have run Ubuntu Server on a number of machines but I find that if you just leave it in its out-of-box state then the boot partition fills up within a year. I have no idea how one of the most popular distributions can have a problem like that.
ok. something to do with retaining old kernels that are not automatically removed in time. I'll keep eye out for this.
 
Use Ubuntu LTS server. If you want to use A GUI use Mint. You could keep a small dual boot partition as spare in case you need Some Windows tools but if you have other Windows machine I would make iT a plain Linux system. If you want to separate the system in a few separate installs look at Proxmox. Easy to setup and easy to deploy containers , backup and make snapshots before an upgrade.
 
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Use Ubuntu LTS server. If you want to use A GUI use Mint. You could keep a small dual boot partition as spare in case you need Some Windows tools but if you have other Windows machine I would make iT a plain Linux system. If you want to separate the system in a few separate installs look at Proxmox. Easy to setup and easy to deploy containers , backup and make snapshots before an upgrade.
thanks Zebra. Yep, installing as we speak from USB. I love rush decisions :)
 
I find that if you just leave it in its out-of-box state then the boot partition fills up within a year. I have no idea how one of the most popular distributions can have a problem like that.
That must have been a pretty small boot partition.
There is an option in the update manager to automatically remove obsolete kernels and dependencies.
 
My standard go to is Debian for servers. I run Mint on my laptop. If you are new to Linux I’d just install Ubuntu. There are more guides for doing things with Ubuntu than any other distro.