Fantastic Seth, thanks for the write up!
I actually booted down my Umbrel node earlier today to set up Bitcoin Core and CLN myself but got stopped by not having a micro hdmi for the Raspberry Pi 4. Who tf owns a micro hdmi anyways?
Man it's been a long time since I saw a micro-HDMI cable XD
I have really been enjoying CLN so far, very pleasantly surprised as I've had lots of issues with LND in previous attempts at this.
https://runcitadel.space/ seems a better alternative to Umbrel, but no CLN support yet AFAICT.
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Yeah, doesn't seem to be support yet but they say they are planning on support for other LN implementations than LND. When I checked their Github, I couldn't find any issue/task for implementing support for e.g CLN so doesn't look like it will come in the near feature to me tbh.
I think I'm just going to go for a Bitcoin Core/CLN setup for now.
You talked previously about not liking the ARM devices, would you mind expanding a bit on that? What would be your favourite hardware for running a full node and LN on?
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IMO the best hardware for the things we need in cryptocurrency are Intel NUCs or Lenovo USFF desktops -- both are similarly sized to a Pi + case, but have full-power hardware, AES support, NVMe support, proper power, etc.
Can easily find them refurbed/second-hand from businesses that dump them, then just throw in a SATA or NVMe SSD and you have an immensely powerful node at your disposal.
Pi's/SBCs have power issues, storage issues, limited hardware instructions sets (usually), and lots of other things that just aren't ideal for something like this IMO. Yes, they're cheap, but they're not even widely available anymore.
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I've seen the Intel NUCs get shilled on Bitcoin Twitter before but haven't heard much about the Thinkcentre's. There's a lot to learn!
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Is this still a good choice or are there more modern options? Under $200?
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Yes! Basically just look for the most modern CPU version you can afford and do a minimum of 8GB of RAM.
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