So, my homelab experiment is running generally quite well.  I keep running into an annoying Proxmox bug that makes the ethernet controller hang up, and hopefully they will fix that soon, but I have a lot of self-hosted services now.  File sharing, media sharing, comics and manga servers, so on and so forth.

Naturally I can’t stop there.

Neither my wife nor I are what you’d call vehemently anti-Windows, but we’ve both been a little annoyed by the direction Windows 11 has been going.  Not the operating system itself – that’s fine – but I’m pretty tired of the constant notifications and hints to install “suggested applications” and in general it feels less like a desktop OS and more like a cheap carrier-subsidized smartphone.

And, to be clear, I’m running Windows 11 Professional.  Not home.  I should not be getting a “hey did you want to install Telegram?” in my start menu.

So, that was one big reason we replaced her desktop PC with an M4 Pro Mac Mini – and it’s been working out very well for her!  But she’d still like access to some of her games that don’t have Mac versions.

Hence, I am delving into the Linux dark arts.

A little while ago, I bought an Ayaneo AM-01 “Retro Mini PC” which is basically just an AMD APU in a box that is heavily reminiscent of a classic Macintosh.  I did this based solely on how it looked, with no real idea what I was going to use the thing for, and thus far I have not been able to justify its existence.

Thankfully, it’s perfect for this project.  My goal is to install Bazzite on it, set it up with Steam remote play, and have it as a network-accessible game streaming device.  It’s only a 5700U so heavy duty gaming is right out – but lightweight stuff will be fine.

Assuming it works – and my guess is that it will, Bazzite has a reputation for being solid and Proton is very mature these days – the step after THAT is to slap a GPU into my Proxmox server and pass it through to a virtual Bazzite box.  Which will mean that the Ayaneo box will again be left without anything to do but also that any system in the house can just boot up Steam and run games from it.

In theory.  Lotta “in theory” in this plan.

Updates as I have them.