Tim BrayDec 1, 2022

Dear LazyMastodon: Hey, we have this ancient 2008 Mac Pro, used to be the Family Mainframe and homework machine for the kids. All It does now is feed music to a DAC and run a Plex server. But it's hot and eats watts and MacOS is so old it won't run browsers or anything useful.

I think I'm gong to replace it with a basic Mac mini and a couple TB of outboard disks. What's a good choice for those disks?

Show threadTim BrayDec 1, 2022
Hmm a little linux or windows box would be way cheaper. I have like 20K songs in M4A though…
Show threadEnrique BarcelliDec 1, 2022

@timbray Absolutely.

#Linux rocks

Show threadTim BrayDec 1, 2022
@kikobar Will a Linux box play my m4a music?
Show threadEnrique BarcelliDec 1, 2022

@timbray yup. almost out the box.

You may need to install some 'ugly' codecs, but that should be it.

Show threadTim BrayDec 1, 2022
@kikobar Hmm I have some bad history with Linux and “almost”…
Show threadcos
@timbray @kikobar i moved my old iTunes library to run under Plex on Linux a few years ago- works fine, including all the m4a files.
Dec 1, 2022 at 5:09amWeb
Show threadTim BrayDec 1, 2022
@cos @kikobar Will it do digital-out through the USB?
Show threadcosDec 1, 2022

@timbray @kikobar dunno!

I tend to stream via the phone, iPad or Apple TV apps rather than playing direct. Though the same server does have an audioengine USB DAC and I run shairport-sync (which _just_ recently added Airplay 2 support).