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And I also don’t want programs to throw all their crap in the documents folder. AppData is made for that.
And I also don’t want programs to throw all their crap in the documents folder. AppData is made for that.
Make a plan. Think about how much storage you need, whether you need redundancy and backups, and what server applications you need to run.
Here you also need to consider how much time you want to spend on maintenance. Premade solutions like Synology are set and forget. Using NAS operating systems mean having to do regular updates. Using just Linux is also an option if you want full control and are confortabile with the command line, but it’s more work.
Then step 2 is getting the hardware.
My recommended route, if you want to spend the least amount of money, is to get a 2nd hand PC, preferably not pre-built (dells and hps have proprietary parts like power supplies). A 4 core cpu from the last 10 years should be fine, and 16gb of RAM is more than enough for most applications. SFFs or MiniPCs might be ok for nvme SSDs only, but if you want hard drives, get one that has enough HDD bays. Depending on what you find, you might need to replace a few things, like the power supply or case.
Servers are good and reliable and have nice features, like network management, redundant NICs, redundant power supplies, but are usually pretty noisy.
My guess is that it’s supposed to look good if you have HDR enabled (which gives you 10 bits per color channel, although even with HDR, the desktop UI still renders in 8 bits per channel).
But still, it looks terrible for most people, and is a complete waste of resources. Because of the horrible banding, I initially thought something was wrong with my monitor. I don’t understand why they added this feature.