Raspberry-Pi alternative Zimaboard in hands-on: Versatile X86 single board all-rounder invites you to try and learn

The biggest difficulty: deciding at the beginning which project you actually want to implement – a media server to play your own videos, your own cloud storage, a web server, a firewall, a router, a gaming server…. Ahh, so many possibilities!

If in doubt, simply implement several projects at once, using virtual machines with Proxmox, for example. The app is not available in the store, but can also be installed via USB stick. For this, you have to connect a monitor and keyboard and enter the BIOS (yes, an Intel PC) to change the boot order (boot from the USB stick). But you also need an external storage, the internal eMMC is not enough for Proxmox.

And so you start to think bigger step by step, but the first projects are also quite simple with what the Zimaboard brings from itself.

For example, setting up a local media server, over which you can watch your own movies and videos. For example, you can install Jellyfin from the App Store in CasaOS with just two clicks. Then you start the app, set up access data, upload a few videos to the Zimaboard, specify the folder in Jellyfin, and you’re done. And you can watch the videos from any PC in your network. The same applies if you want to share files easily between several devices in the network. If you have a domain or get one, you can also access it on the go.