This is my first setup since moving away from home and into my own place with my partner. I finally had the ability to setup my Raspberry Pi running Plex, qBittorrent, and a Samba share. We use Plex more than we use Apple TV or Netflix at this point because it is just so much less of a hassle, and we would cancel them immediately if we did not get them free with our phone plan.
I have my work Macbook and PC both connected to a KVM to easily switch between the two. I run both Win10Pro and ZorinOS in dual-boot, but I primarily use Windows as the last thing I want to do after work most days is write code (I’m a software engineer). Recently my PC’s primary use has been to stream games to my Steam Deck that it is not powerful enough to run. My partner and I spend a good amount of time on the couch playing our own games next to each other as they’ve recently taken over the living room TV with their PC to play their millionth run of Stardew Valley.
I’ve mostly been playing Tetris Effect Connected but I just finally got around to starting RDR2, so that will probably take over soon enough. I also jump between The Binding of Isaac, Borderlands 2, and Minecraft quite a bit.
I added some more pictures below. The decorations around my desk are nothing spectacular, but they are all things that make me happy, and I don’t like to be surrounded by too much unnecessary clutter. If you have any questions about my setup feel free to ask!
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Love the idea of qBittorent on a Raspberry Pi. Any recommendations on a guide for a complete novice, or given your background did you find you didn’t need one?
Setup looks brilliant.
I followed this guide from PiMyLifeUp. I’m a pretty technical person, but I’ve been leaning on their guides more and more because they’re so damn simple, and I’m tired of feeling like I’m reading the Linux equivalent of medical journals.
One issue I ran into was the qbittorrent user that is created did not have rwx access to the directory I was downloading files to causing my torrents to stall, so be aware of that. You also need a small fan for the Pi’s processor otherwise it will overheat. Other than that we just have a 2TB SSD connected over USB to the Pi 3B+ and it works great, even with 4k BluRay content.
Once you get the qBittorrent server set up, set the default download location as a library in Plex and as long as you enable autoscan torrents should automatically get ingested into Plex once they finish. The setup also makes it way easier to seed and get super high ratios if you’re into that. Then you can connect to qBittorrent from anywhere on your local network and give it magnet links, or even setup ZeroTier One as a P2P VPN to allow you to connect from remote networks. Currently it is setup to tunnel all traffic through ProtonVPN running on Wireguard.
Nice setup! What’s the monitor?
Thanks! It’s a 49" Odyssey CRG9. It’s rated for 120Hz, but like most Samsung panels you can push them a bit. I currently have it at 144 Hz and haven’t had any issues. I got it refurbished on Amazon for $800.
Love mine as well. Works perfectly in linux with freesync, and i’ve used it to finish off a lot of my Steam backlog.
And 120hz at 5120x1440 will stress even the most beastly cards, so didn’t feel like having to go for an even higher refresh rate one.
Protip, putting the taskbar on the left/right side makes sure you don’t waste a lot of pixels.
How do you like the ultra wide monitor? I have two mointors but wish I got an ultra wide. Never used an ultra wide befored
Nice one
Looks super clean! I just upgraded and I’ll be getting my first 1440p ultrawide (not super ultrawide tho - my budget was only about $300) in a few weeks! Super excited about it!
Could you share the details on your KVM? I had a hell of a time getting one to work with my gaming PC and Mac laptop. Eventually gave up. Would love to know if you found a good one.
Sure! It is this one from Amazon. I went for it because unlike a lot of KVMs I saw, this one had a “remote” that could be put on your desk instead of having to hit the switch button on the KVM itself which made hiding all the cables a ton easier. You can see it the center of my monitor stand.
The KVM itself has 4 USB-A inputs and two DP/USB-A outputs (one for each device). I run one set of DP/USB-A cables to my PC and the other set to my Macbook. The USB-A going to my Macbook plugs into a USB A to C dongle with an ethernet port on it that I plug directly into our switch. Unfortunately, when I ran ethernet into the switch I was only getting ~400Mbps down instead of 1Gbps, so I opted to run networking to each computer independently. For video I use a DP to USB-C cable which goes directly into my Macbook. For charging I just use the standard charger that came with it. Even though it is not as nice as having a single cable for power/video/input it works great for my use case, and plugging in the extra two cables is hardly a bother considering the laptop sits there for days at a time.
Hope this helps!
Would you mind sharing the picture?
It’s really nice :)
At least you aren’t using Spyware11.
