Intel Compute Stick STCK1A32WFC

Bought when I got inspired by Action Retro - Intel's Tiny, Weird Computer video about Intel Compute Stick. I wanted a small, low-power x86 computer with bare minimum stuff included, as local home server connected 24/7 to the TV. If GPU allows for 1080p30 playback, this would make a great movie watching station.

I want to install Alpine Linux (with edge branch), using F2FS on root partition, no swap.

STCK1A32WFC supports powered USB 2.0 hubs, and up to 128GB SDXC microSD card. I want to install Kioxia Exceria g2 128GB as secondary partition (with F2FS as well), USB→RJ45 adapter, and potentially external hard drive in the future.

1. With unpowered 4-port USB 2.0 hub, STCK can't handle connected USB devices on boot.
2. With another, powered 7-port USB 2.0 hub, modloop service on Alpine Install won't start in specified 60 seconds

After restarting modloop service manually after boot, I was able to connect Realtek 10/100 USB Ethernet adapter, load modules and do pretty much standard setup-alpine. I manually setup eMMC partitions for 1GB vFAT EFI and the rest to ext4 rootfs. setup-disk automatically found that it's on UEFI system and installed and configured GRUB without any help.

I've installed XFCE4 using setup-desktop, but with 2GB of RAM (without SWAP…) and such low-spec CPU, it's simply not worth it.

Instead, I disabled lightdm service, and configured my own reverse-ssh service which uses autossh to estabilish a tunnel to my remote machine, so I could SSH into home from any network available.

Also configured 128GB Kioxia Exceria G2 microSD card with f2fs, and made it mount automatically via fstab at boot. Works great!

• Design and 3D print some sort of enclosure, so it will sit with USB hub in nice package
• Replace thermal paste
• Maaaaaybe add some better cooling solution?

1. stck1a32wfc-stck1a32fc-stck1a8lfc-techprodspec01.pdf