calling the phone company and faxing them paperwork

doing WHAT the fuck now?!?

~~on a more serious note, can you elaborate on the thing where you, a call receiver, have access to the GPS on the caller's phone? like, how?~~ asked and answered, still don't understand how that happens.

I can do 2 out of 3. instead of running the abomination that is Kodi, you can install normal linux to the Pi (Raspbian), and then add on jellyfin-mpv-shim (or plex-mpv-shim) and macast (for youtube, peertube, etc and it also supports DLNA). they are sinks, i.e. there is no UI for you to interact with. instead, you use your mobile phone or tablet to browse your library, youtube, whathaveyou. when you want something played, you send it to the sink and it plays it in full screen. you can use the mobile device to control playback (pause, ff/rew, change subs, etc.).

can't help with the gaming part, moonlight/sunshine should do that but I haven't got any experience with them.

the Pi 4 you got is more than adequate for all the mentioned tasks.

Plasma on the desktop with the 40" 4K screen with lotsa windows and desktops. Gnome on the laptop, each app full-screen and swipe left-right to switch between them.

yeah, had the same deal with Xiaomi's unlock tool. no WINE, no VM, bare-metal Windows only. oh yeah, doesn't even work on Ryzens, has to be Intel, like wtfff...

check out the big brains on @joyjoy@lemm.ee! works, thanks!

to me the Ian Holm abomination was terrible, without any redeeming qualities. same thing as rogue one, exact same shittyness, zero technological progress, crude and unnecessarily distracting.

I've gone the other way - there is no interacting per se with the media PC; instead, it's a dumb sink that plays back everything you send it, by way of macast and jellyfin-mpv-shim. you use android apps to send it stuff (e.g. newpipe share to allshare which connects to macast and jellyfin android app which connects to JMS) and to control playback (pause, skip, change subs, etc.). so, all media selection and playback control is done from the mobile device, no need to touch the media PC doing the playback.

not sure this will fit into your use case because of spotty internet, but that should prompt you to install jellyfin post-haste. then you have two options, the mentioned android app + JMS or just the jellyfin media player which can run in TV mode with a pared down controller (up/down/left/right/enter/back) - I've successfully repurposed an ancient Apple Remote that has just those six keys.

I'm trying to utilize a couple of core 2 duo macbooks for the same purpose and it's not going great. I have twice the cores and RAM but they're stuck at 800 MHz, because of no batteries.

anyhow, very slow and issues with a lot of codecs I throw at them. try mpv without a DE/WM.

awesome! now onwards to romsfun, 1337x, etc. and figure out how to install, transfer, archive, etc. then you get to upgrade the disk and so on, barrels of fun await!

you're not mentioning which Pixel you're getting for $200 and also that's only twice the stated budget. anyhow, the cheapest Pixel 7 I have locally available is $310 ("lighty used"), which I think is the lowest rung; sixes are like three years old and that's a no bueno for phones with fixed batteries. as an aside, if I'm buying something someone rubbed their face on, spat on, and rubbed all over, I'm paying half price max, not 15% less than NiB ($355 here).

last week I bought a Poco F1 (SDM845/6GB) in not great condition for $60; excellent LineageOS and PostmarketOS support though and easily replaceable batteries. a month or so prior, a Mi 9T Pro (SDM855/6GB) for $80. those are on the high side, there's a ton of LineageOS supported Xiaomi devices for $50 or less if you go down to SDM6xx/4GB, which is plenty for everyday use. they can be had on the cheap because their MIUI operating system is bloated and hella slow so people just upgrade, whereas unlocking the boot loader and flashing an alternative nets you a super useable device.

I'm not saying any of those is as good as a modern Pixel device, but for my use cases they are more than enough.

I don't understand the fascination of other commenters with mini-PCs, as the mini-ness was mentioned nowhere in the OP.

any used and decomissioned old office PC, any i5/i7 is way more powerful than you'll need for that setup. you get everything you need right in the box and you can cram it full with cheap RAM and hard disks. you get to repurpose something that's useless as a desktop workstation and not buy more future e-waste.

yes, the mini-PCs and the Rpis are more power efficient, but the operating costs of a $30-50 PC don't come close to the price of buying one of these mini-things, not to mention - figuring out how to run large hard disks with it.

maybe there's some way to filter out the stepmothers with the stepfathers on the stepladders...?