Your response is a common one I have seen time and again when they are trying to bow out while saving face. It’s not subtle.

Simple question: can you listen to music on YouTube? Followup question: is it still a video if the content is only the song? What would you call it?

I sincerely hope you learned something today and will be less of a pedant online. Cheers.

If it’s not, maybe you can tell me what a podcast is, and how it’s different from a YouTube video?

If I can listen to the YouTube video without needing it for visual aid… that’s just it: they’re the same thing. This wraps nicely into the video podcast thing you were whinging about earlier.

…why would I do that?

Considering your stance on this topic… why wouldn’t you? It’d be on brand.

This is not “language adaptation”, this is a complete erosion of the meaning of the word.

I really was hoping you’d say this. Semantics. Again. Language isn’t some dead unchanging thing. It morphs and adjusts with culture and technological changes.

By your logic you must surely lament the death of ancient ‘proper’ English circa 5th century before all those awful changes came about.

We have words for videos, they’re called “videos”, which are fundamentally different from a “podcast”.

Synonyms exist. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge them might be your business… however the fact you understood the medium being spoken about suggests quite plainly that language has succeeded here.

Podcast are not necessarily offline. You can stream them.

Ah, but initially - one name was for a live stream and the other for a recording. Streaming is ambiguous: are you streaming live or a recording? Thankfully: we do not make such a differentiation any more. I find it somewhat interesting your stance allows for such a difference to be ignored, though. Perhaps, given time, you will moderate on the remainder of this terminology. After all it’s a rather silly hill to die upon.

Again semantics. You are attempting to split hairs based on distribution opposed to type. This is like being a pedant over someone referring to tissues as a Kleenex despite it not being that particular brand. Podcasts were ambiguous back when they were still new, too.

Shoutcast servers were/hosted digital broadcasts. Podcasts were containerized (aka offline) recordings of these. You could argue that calling a live show a podcast is technically incorrect: but thanks to language continuing to adapt to its environment… You’d actually just be out of date or misinformed.

Semantics. A podcast is and was something that was typically long format akin to a talk show - that was something that could be listened to without requiring you to watch it. It is not audio exclusive. Many radio shows may and do have video feeds but that does not prevent them from being called radio shows.

It worked on my box!

To be fair a certain security company was in global news for exactly that same send it behavior. Why waste precious resources on multiple instances? Investors hate waste. 😅

This. They provide outstanding insights and the articles they provide alongside the data are quite good.

People are converting. Not entirely on its own merit, of course: Its competition repeatedly is enshitifying the user experience and pushing people to try other options. Combine that with steam and their work on linux’s compatibility layer and you get most of the movement.

That said once you hit a certain market share developers become more willing to port or provide binaries for the growing platform. It can accelerate further from there. Linux mainstream isn’t there yet but it’s starting to get in striking distance of its competition.

Absolutely 👍. I’ll just add that there are a lot of alternate routes to get the result you want so research and experiment but ideally set a deadline which can help with decision paralysis. Later changes are a problem for future you 😁.

The two workstation nooks (spaces) have the capability to have a second monitor but I’ve since retired them in favor of ultrawide monitors which I find are a better experience in general. My current working solution is a split between two technologies: one thin client (second monitors) and one network distribution solution using multicast (primary displays and USB). Both run on copper 1 gig but the multicast traffic requires a switch that doesn’t suck and vlan usage. On average a single port can reach 70-85% usage sustained. I believe my longest run is 150’ ish.

Cost per node is roughly 300- so comparable to what you are experiencing. If I went stupid cheap I could probably cut that to maybe 150-250 depending on my luck with eBay and patience.

In terms of capabilities you could argue that this could be done without distribution using a nuc solution… but you’d have to split resources to reach node you’d need a full feature set at.

My central server is a threadripper build with 2 gpus for direct passthrough to ‘gaming’ vms and a split gpu handling the rest of the needs of the other systems. Thanks to the matrix capabilities any given seat can be any system… or in some cases 2 seats can be a single rig (2 room gaming off the same display). There is a cost savings to be found in splitting resources from a more expensive build out to cheaper nodes… but ymmv depending on active seats and specific needs. I believe as a general rule it should be less costly and more efficient (power/heat) than individual solutions.

This. Exactly. Many solutions exist but need to be selected based on scale and personal needs.

None of the presented solutions cover the aspect of being in a different place than the rack, the same network is fine, but at a minimum a different room.

If someone can show me a multi seat gaming server that has native remote performance (as in you drag windows around in 144 fps, not the standard artifacty high latency behavior of vnc) I’ll eat a shoe.

Thin clients absolutely can do this already. There are a variety of ways to transmit low latency video around a home from HDBaseT solutions to multicast / network driven ones. Nevermind basic solutions like sunshine /moonlight… Nvidia variants etc.

I have a single racked PC for feeding my home which has 3 ‘desk’ endpoints and two tvs… all of which are fed from the same location and can be dynamically matrixed (albeit the choke point is usb2 to each location because I’m cheap.). Latency is maybe 1.5-3 frames from live. Other solutions are normally around 5-8 which while higher are sufficiently snappy and won’t effect competitive play (professional level notwithstanding.)

A lot of latency comes down to tuning your solution and research. The vnc method you refer to is the lowest common denominator running on ancient technology and codecs simply because it is a widely supported standard.

Edit: As far as 144 goes- I don’t have any displays that run that but I have two running at 120 with no issue.

As others have expressed- were already there. Understand though that the reason this hasn’t caught on mainstream is the entire purpose of what you are asking is simple: it runs counter to the standards of commercial capitalism. We are talking about efficiency, self hosting, doing more with less, and cutting strings.

That said- understand that what you are undertaking is not dissimilar from building infrastructure in a company. You are building and expanding to meet your needs. Your needs are unique so there isn’t a ‘turn key’ solution that will fit perfectly… so you need to try things and see what works.

As far as things you are talking about specifically: you are going to ultimately be dipping your toes into the virtualization world… so xcp-ng and proxmox are good choices. If you can get your hands on older copies and uh… source a key or two: esxi is also very beginner friendly but won’t be able to upgrade thanks to their new pricing model. You seem like you are aware of the YouTube sphere so let me recommend 2GuysTech and the series on different hypervisors.

Once you decide on a hypervisor it’s as ‘simple’ as building a PC to meet your needs. If you have one already I’d start there to get a feel for how much you can pull out of it to determine how much you may need. You can probably split up a single GPU or just pass it through (cost vs performance.). LLMs are power / resource hungry so that may require it’s own GPU.

If power is cheap by you you can look into older server hardware but honestly this can be a messy space to dabble in (noise, heat, power costs.)

From there play with services that fit your needs.

It’s very doable and there are some easier paths to take… certainly- but again the thing about homelabs is it’s very custom. This is why the community (in general) is willing to help. We all have had to forge the same path.

Maybe we were talking about different units then - this is the one I had:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Archos+Jukebox+Recorder+20+Hard+Drive++Replacement/103263

Standard 2.5" laptop drive 👍

In general laptop drives were a gamble so it’s not shocking. I’m curious if I got a later batch or something or just got lucky.

Man my 6000 was immortal. Outlived 2 desktop drives and survived a car roll while in use. I was convinced they had made some blood pact with Nokia lol.