3 years ago, I was “given” a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 from my previous employer since they were going to get rid of it. One of the hardware guys explained to me that they would have to pull the SSD out and destroy it, but when I found one in there anyway, he just said “Oops”. Since then, I have mainly used this as a secondary server, running Ubuntu Server and basically just being a Docker host, sandbox and Jellyfin transcoder (Intel QuickSync is nice). It wasn’t until I had to purchase all new hardware for my main server that this mini PC was “decommissioned” and taken out of the server room.

So what is there to do with a spare PC? Well … anything!

Here are a few things that I’ve been testing this week on it.

Arch + HyprlandLink to heading

For some reason, Omarchy has been popping up on my Youtube feed and I decided to watch a few videos about it. I really enjoy the philosophy behind it (keyboard first and fast install/stand up time), but it’s a developer’s OS that doesn’t fit my needs. I’ve always liked the idea behind fast and light operating systems that just get out of the way, something that is quick to install and get going from scratch. But the real reason why I even bring this up is Hyprland. I’ve never used it, much less a window tiling manager (I’m not the biggest fan of them), so I thought I would give it a try.

I performed a basic Arch Linux install on the HP, used the Hyprland preset built into archinstall, and added a few applications on top like waybar, yay, brave, etc. Hyprland is interesting to say the least and isn’t that hard to use or customize, but it does not flow with my day to day work flow. Being a Windows Administrator does not allow for a keyboard first approach; the mouse is a key tool for my work. Sure, the mouse works, but doesn’t it take away from a tiling window managers strengths? I didn’t try any games just to see how it would work.

Needless to say, if I did more developer or Linux administration work, Hyprland would be an interesting tool to use.

Custom Arch ISOLink to heading

Before I decided to move on from Hyprland, I tried my hand at creating a custom Arch ISO, prebuilt with my packages and customizations of choice. The inspiration came from Dom’s Blog (Building a low-powered offline and offgrid bug-out media server), mimicking the scenario where you didn’t have Internet, but you do have computer parts and a power source like a battery bank! My spin on this is that I had a custom Arch ISO that I could either run live from a USB stick or install on any computer. Either choice would give you a XFCE desktop for speed, apps like MPV, Firefox, and Neovim, and other files like movies, music, PDFs, eBooks, and maps of the local area. I mean, who could survive a long term outage without some episodes of Friends?

I didn’t spend a whole lot of time researching this, so I (I know…) leaned on ChatGPT and Grok to help me out with a basic crash course. Needless to say, their dataset is NOT up to date, so I had quite a few issues getting things like XFCE autologin and custom scripts to run properly on ISO creation. Maybe I can put some more time into this and do more thorough testing in the future. I just thought it would be cool to have some kind of a “post-apocalyptic” distro of Linux ready to go with everything ready for use.

A few last things that I did not try (yet):

• Kiwix and an offline copy of both the Arch Wiki and Wikipedia with images
• Wireless AP (I need hardware for this) so other devices could connect

What’s NextLink to heading

It’s always fun to have a spare PC sitting around for when you have a crazy idea or two. I actually just installed Linux Mint onto this HP Mini PC earlier this morning, just to test this distro out and try some other oddball ideas.

This also sparked an idea based on a project that I’ve been working on over the last two years, so maybe I’ll write about that as well.