I got my hands on a Lenovo ThinkSmart Hub 500 - you may have seen these in conference rooms, its a small Teams Room or Zoom Room device, based off their Tiny lineup, with a built-in touch display thats about 11" in diagonal.
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkSmart/ThinkSmart_Hub_500/ThinkSmart_Hub_500_Spec.pdf
I left the 128gb nvme in there for now, and threw Debian 12 on it. Touch worked throughout the installation process, all I did was attach a keyboard, power, and network (along with the thumb drive with netinstall), now installed with KDE.
Considering the specs, the only part I’m surprised works well is the touchscreen, its otherwise just a generic lenovo tiny (which I have several of already, 6th-9th gen, as part of my tiny/mini/micro server stack). I could have chosen a different flavor, but I’m a long, long, loooonngggg time Debain user so its my go-to.
In terms of touch, tap, drag, and long press are all working. Video looks good with the UI set at 125% scaling, and to be candid its rather snappy and responsive.
I did this 100% for my own personal entertainment, so now for some thoughts for the community - what would be fun to use it for? A few of my thoughts…
- I could use it as a HomeAssistant kiosk. Neat, but… overkill compared to the tablets doing the same job.
- Make it an emulation station, attach my steam controller and maybe my usb adapters for N64/GC/Sega/PS/etc.
- Use it to test a series of distributions to see how well they handle touch drivers for this silly thing (EndeavorOS is probably going to happen, I may be a long time Debian guy but I should spend more regular time in other things, and not just my arch VMs).
- I don’t know, gcompris for my kids? They already have it though on an android tablet and an old mac mini (like, 2011ish) hooked up to the TV in the living room.
- Make it another proxmox endpoint for the cluster, install a DE anyway, and then let it be an always-visible display for grafana?
- Install OBS, let the hdmi capture have some purpose?
What about you folks, what would you find fun to do with this box?
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If it had battery, it would be more useful. I was originally thinking HA control, but you wouldn’t even be able to put it somewhere convenient. Maybe make a tiny scale Arcade Machine? The screen is about the right angle.
Ok, so had to mention while looking at some game stuff to install… I remembered that I have a gog account, grabbed lutris, and boy is Quest for Glory 1 entertaining on this! QFG2-5 installed as well, unfortunately the touchscreen doesn’t work great in that mode. Solaar + a spare logitech mouse and off to play… Going to have to grab my steam controller when I get up. I think a stupid fun classic game/emulation station is what this is going to be! (At least until I decide to do something else)
Agreed - lets be honest, Lenovo put zero thought into this. Its just a tiny with a screen basically glued to the top, and tons of poorly managed cables coming out of the back. You could technically get away with just the power cord on it since it has wifi, but its kind of nonsensical that way. I could build a battery pack, but… meh.
Small arcade is definitely a fun idea though, something I could stick in the living room. Since it has two video outs as well, I could set it up to take over the TV or just be a standalone as the mood strikes.