I’ve toyed around with switching full time on my desktop and ended up buying an orange pi 5 plus and a raspberry pi 3. The pi 3 runs pihole and homebridge while I just use the orange pi to play around and daily drive as much as I can. Currently run Armbian off an m.2 and have it set to boot to batocera off an sd card if I want to retro game.
Half the time I just SSH in from my iPad and the other half of the time I use the desktop environment for Armbian.
Side note: I run some local AI projects on my PC and it was really fun getting some basic models running on the NPU in the orange pi 5. That’s why I ended up going with a specific version (can’t remember which off the top of my head) of armbian so I can run small local AI models.
I think a second machine is way better than dual booting. Dual booting is a pain in the ass. I try to avoid rebooting the machine for any reason, its disruptive.
Better get an old cheap thinkpad or small PC. And you dont have to take the risk of learning about partitioning on your primary machine as first baby step. Keep your important stuff where its safe until such time as you are comfortable switching over.
I’ve toyed around with switching full time on my desktop and ended up buying an orange pi 5 plus and a raspberry pi 3. The pi 3 runs pihole and homebridge while I just use the orange pi to play around and daily drive as much as I can. Currently run Armbian off an m.2 and have it set to boot to batocera off an sd card if I want to retro game.
Half the time I just SSH in from my iPad and the other half of the time I use the desktop environment for Armbian.
Side note: I run some local AI projects on my PC and it was really fun getting some basic models running on the NPU in the orange pi 5. That’s why I ended up going with a specific version (can’t remember which off the top of my head) of armbian so I can run small local AI models.
I think a second machine is way better than dual booting. Dual booting is a pain in the ass. I try to avoid rebooting the machine for any reason, its disruptive.
Better get an old cheap thinkpad or small PC. And you dont have to take the risk of learning about partitioning on your primary machine as first baby step. Keep your important stuff where its safe until such time as you are comfortable switching over.