Plan your hardware refresh with the Debian release cycle

Tips and Tricks
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If your hardware upgrade plans coincide with the release cycle of Debian stable you will have the easiest time selecting a new FreedomBox with reasonably up to date components that will work with FreedomBox “out of the box.” It’s a good time to think about hardware budget now in March 2025.

Debian release cycles are fairly slow. At this moment we will soon see a change in Debian stable from bookworm to trixie. If you are thinking about a new FreedomBox a good time to do this is after the stable release change and here’s why…

  • The previous stable release, bookworm, was June, 2023.
  • We are almost two years into bookworm and and there is a lot of unsupported hardware that has been brought onto the market in that time.
  • Once the Debian testing release, trixie, becomes stable many of these new hardware options will be supported in Debian.

I did not do this, so here is what my reality looks like…

  • I would prefer to run Debian stable.
  • My new hardware is not supported by bookworm
  • I installed testing and it’s working fine, but I’m now on testing instead of stable.
  • Soon trixie will be the stable release and I’ll want to change my release from testing to stable to get back on the stable release.
  • I’m sure that this can all be done using apt, but I’ve never been in this situation and it sounds a little complicated. I never wanted to be this skilled with Debian releases.
  • I’ll have to choose between “upgrade in place,” or wait for trixie to be stable before I complete the migration to the new computer.

You can save yourself that drama with just a little planning and patience.

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I think the hardware situation is less than optimal for non-technical users. It is hard to pick hardware that works for all the demanding apps (matrix, nextcloud, etc.). For more than year, we have been discussing for a while ways to offer easy to buy hardware like Pioneer Edition but with more powerful hardware.

To that extent, I am working on building and shipping amd64 based hardware with 16GB RAM, a capable CPU, and RAID with at least 1TB or storage for users who can’t or don’t want to build their own machines like these. I hope to make this available, at least in the US, in about 2-3 months coinciding with the next Debian stable release.

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That sounds like a nice option you’re making. I hope you’re able to get that done at a value price point. Many of the preinstalled options look great to me, but I think they are low volume operators and their effort becomes a big piece of the price. I’d really like a librem or tuxbook, but in the end I bought the big brand and fought through the details. It’s fine if you like that sort of thing, but for many users - or first time users, it becomes a monumental effort.

I also learned that my vendor had certified linux units available, but only after I didn’t buy one of those. It’s okay - I enjoy the little ceremony of formatting the Windows installation before ever booting it. I shake my tiny fist at The ManTM. I also note that Debian is blacklisted in the as-shipped secure boot configuration.

For those that like the details I just learned that you are more likely to have a compatible computer the day after the distribution upgrade than the day before. Even if it is the same computer!

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Thanks for the heads up.
I am using a PC that has a 500g ssd main drive with two plugin usb drives for extra storage but want to upgrade the main box with a larger main drive. The main drive is too small for everything I want on it and setting up a good backup plan has been put off pending an upgrade. I have been thinking I would wait until trixie moves to stable to do that. On the other hand, it might just make more sense to see what sunil comes up with as that may be a better way to go.
I will keep watch on these discussions.
Thanks.
Ken W.

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Thanks for the topic as I will be swapping hardware sometime this year. Here’s what I’ve got and where I’m going.

I’m running FBX on a Superlogics industrial mini PC and shopped for Linux compatible because the PC has a prior chosen purpose and I require running Linux.

I also have a Beelink Mini PC running as our HTPC which also required my self imposed Linux compatibility so that’s what I looked for in that case as well.

The processors in the Beelink HTPC are the same as an Intel NUC and Kubuntu works fine.

The Superlogics, with it’s wide operating temperature range, will be going out to the shed to run an automated greenhouse so I’ll probably just get another Beelink to take over as the fbx box.

Beelink mentions Linux compatibility while that info is hard to find for the Intel NUC.

The Beelink HTPC is, 16BG ram, 3.4GHz Intel 12th Gen 4-Core for $170 but I may upgrade to the NUC someday because it would probably be higher quality and last longer.

The Superlogics currently running fbx is only 4gb ram and 2.0GHz Quad Core, Celeron.

I already had Debian with Plasma desktop installed so I installed FreedomBox on top of it but the machine with 4GB RAM barely makes it.(currently using 2.40 of 3.70 available with almost zero traffic)

I added a couple of lightweight desktops and iirc Xfce seemed to use the least RAM. Might have been LXDE but they both brought down to about 2gb.

We’re talking about a server here though so what do we need?

Any CPU that’s not cutting edge and a LAN adapter which are pretty universal because they’re not cutting edge tech and will likely be Linux compatible.

We also need RAM, mostly because, unlike a server, we’re running a desktop and it’s the GUI that uses much of the resources.

Now if your fbx server is also your daily drive PC, that’s a different story.

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Hi All,

I have just put Freedombox on to a “Lenovo M715q Tiny Mini PC AMD A6-8570E 3.4GHz 8GB RAM 128G SSD”.

I bought this mini PC about four months ago from ebay at a good price £90.00 including postage. It a new old stock, it had not seen a day work before. The Debian 13 Trixie, install went on using btrfs drive format. The Snapshots option works like a dream. This mini PC came pre installed with Windows 10 Pro. Wifi works perfectly. There a spare drive caddy for a SSD drive. I am using that spare caddy for a SSD drive to backup on to. The main drive is a “128GB M.2”.

Regards to all: Peter

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I posted a question today about upgrading the primary drive in my FreedomBox but then remembered that there was talk about more powerful hardware like the Pioneer Edition. Are discussions of this idea ongoing?

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@KenW Yes, the plan is coming along nicely. We picked nice hardware and setup an online store. It is awaiting some final tasks and sales can go live in the coming weeks hopefully.

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I prioritize hardware that works exclusively with free software, including the booting process, because I feel that depending on some non-free blobs means loosing control over my own device. From that perspective, the Pioneer is far better than any modern intel or amd computer. The rockpro64 might be a nice solution, I experimented with one, a NAS case and 2 disks, but I don’t have it working now. I understand that intel and amd have a lot more hardware choice, but this comes with giant non-free blobs (ME, FSP, or whatever) so I view this rather as a last resort solution.

Besides, I learned a lesson recently. I had bought a computer that runs exclusively with free software and put 5 disks as RAID. At some point, the computer didn’t work anymore, it was a problem with the water cooling and I wasn’t terribly experienced with this, so it took me months before I could repair it. During those months, I had no way to access anything from the RAID, as I didn’t have any computer that could hold the 5 disks, and I had considered no backup was needed because it was RAID.

So the lesson would be: even if I use RAID, I’d rather have an external case for all the disks so that, in case of problem with one computer, I can just connect the disk case to another computer. And I’d rather have a daily backup too, because that case could have a failure.

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