Synology has Container Manager, which is their GUI frontend for Docker, so if it’ll run in Docker it’ll run on a Syno NAS. I’m running Pihole on mine just fine.

As for the M.2 drives, you can use non-Synology ones as storage. Don’t quote me on it but I’ve a feeling it “just works” in the EU where they’re not allowed to force you to use specific brands, but if it doesn’t then there’s a script that removes the restriction: https://github.com/007revad/Synology_enable_M2_volume

You should check their repo as they have other useful scripts. I’m using the one that enables dedupe on non-SSD volumes myself.

Mind officially blown! I’ve just spun up a Debian KDE instance and it’s running beautifully. Exactly what I wanted, thank you!

Yes, big fan of XCP-ng, we use it extensively in work, but I’m not convinced it’s my best option in this case.

I’m using plenty of containers, accelerated and otherwise, but I also want a full-blown desktop that I can access from wherever. Even on a wired LAN, streaming that desktop is slow and laggy when it’s hosted on my NAS, which I think is due to the lack of hardware acceleration on that system. I want to move the VM to a host that has that feature (currently running Ubuntu Server) but I need a hypervisor that doesn’t require its own desktop system to be installed in order to manage it.

Plenty of good replies here to help me though.

Well indeed, that’s why I want to move the VM off the NAS and onto something with some hardware acceleration. Are there any remote frontend options for KVM?

Firefox. I’m fairly convinced it’s something to do with UBO or one of the blocklists but I’ve never taken the time to dig into it properly.

You’ve reminded me of a similar frustration that I’ve never found the answer to - though it may be adblock related - in that whenever I open a link to eBay it completely wipes the history for that tab. Or possibly it opens a new tab and kills the parent. Either way I always forget about it until the next time and then it drives me mad all over again.

Yeah this. Shortly before he left the church, a friend of mine’s pastor told him not to recycle because it delays the end times. These people want Armageddon and think they’re doing god’s work by hurrying it along.

Yeah I’d have been interested to know how long it would take to suitably warm up from the surface. I guess we’ll never know.

I have an app called Star Walk 2 that does something very similar. Notifications about cool shit happening and then helps you to look in the right direction for it, including ISS fly-bys.

Thanks, I’m going to have to put some research into this!

I’ve heard Shelly bandied about quite a lot in the HA circle but this is the first thing that’s made me sit up and take notice. You’re saying they’re far more customisable than, say, your standard ZigBee light switch?

Yes of course! I enabled experimental features to use a template add-on, but I later removed it and turned the option off.

Either they A/B tested this or they accidentally released some of it early because I got all of that new UI stuff a few months ago, complete with addons appearing in the HA updates section. A few days later, just as I’d got used the change, it disappeared!

At least I now know I wasn’t going mad.

Never named any of my cars until we got an ID4. It is called Heidi.

To be fair the Synology lineup is confusing, but if you get the right model - one with a Ryzen processor and support for 32GB memory (officially; they can take more) - then you’ve got yourself a proper little workhorse with low power consumption, a stable, reliable OS, and super easy expansion thanks to the hot-swap drive bays and their Hybrid RAID option. My 8 bay model is running a couple of full-blown VMs and what must be two dozen or so docker containers while barely breaking a sweat. The DS723+ is the equivalent 2 bay model.

For things that need some acceleration like Plex and Immich I’ve added a little N100 box (a Beelink S12 Pro) with Ubuntu Server and another Docker instance, and mounted the NAS storage via SMB. This also sips power even when transcoding 4x Plex streams at once.

All of which is to say you don’t need to do a complex, potentially power hungry and difficult to expand self build to do what you want.

Neither does the BBC’s couch to 5k app, for who knows what reason.

You are a legend, thank you!

Any chance of a link to the clip?

Some of the very first ones were great; Trevor the vampire, and the one that birthed Homsar (possibly the very first one?). Stuck with it for all the classics; lightswitch rave, Trogdor, teen girl squad, 20X6, Sweet Cuppin’ Cakes (I still bring up Eh, Steve! to this day).

Eventually they started getting longer and longer and lost a lot of the punchiness and I stopped watching.

I think my favourite is probably Trogdor. The way Strong Mad has just carved ‘DAGRON’ into the table always makes me chuckle for some reason.