I’ve seen a lot of avifs masquerading as jpegs lol (I know because KDE Dolphin for some reason isn’t showing a preview for those until I rename them)

There are plenty of mobile ryzens with a TDP of 15W, I’m not suggesting a Threadripper for a tv box, that’d be crazy :)

The -U (“ultrabook”) Ryzens are found not only in laptops but also in mini pcs, very efficient (yes even at idle, I have a power meter) are also the -GE and -G APUs despite the higher TDP (35W and 65W) because of their monolithic design. And in mini pcs the system consumes less power compared to putting the same cpus on a beefy ATX motherboard with a hungry chipset and inefficient VRMs.

Intel+TSMC mobile/embedded cpus are also great choices, same concepts apply.

I should have written desktop environment (DE) and not manager (I mixed it up with WM, window managers), btw they’re not just for actual desk-top computers, some are even optimised for the TV (and input with a remote). I misunderstood that you felt a need for a lighter software setup instead of simply preferring it, my bad, and kudos for making sensible choices, bloat is bad. Happy linuxing.

I share the general sentiment but lower TDP does not equal lower consumption, any “mobile” ryzen since the series 4000 on Zen 2 (7nm) is more efficient at most tasks than an N100 (10nm TSMC node), and barring specific mobo issues all have in general very low idle consumptions. But their iGPUs are a lot more capable, faster at anything, no need to limit yourself to a lightweight Desktop manager. Shop used and you might get more bang for your buck with an older ryzen mini pc than a newer N100 one.

There are a lot of fine options indeed, but nowhere near the affordability they could achieve today IMHO. EVs can be made very cheaply and every month the price of LiFePo4 (the cheaper and more robust, slightly less dense type) batteries is going down. Very few small cheap BEV cars are available. A Citroen Ami is like ~8-10k€; that (very cute) thing should cost maybe half of that.

Defaults are extremely important, we can’t babysit every app update in the devices of a tech illiterate person we help or simply suggested Firefox to

With a bench power supply (or a similar ghetto version, that is any lion charger plus leads) you can charge single cells even while they’re connected in series. That’s how battery balancing works

I’d start with very low amps and maybe low voltages too to revive them

Jesus Christ