Get an M1 Mac mini or upgrade my existing setup?

[webwalrus]

@Shovel_Knight

I could also get something like a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny for next to nothing to run Linux natively (and also Docker containers - a much nicer experience under Linux than under macOS), so it does not make sense for me to keep my old mini.

Just a potentially-dumb question - let’s say you sell your Mini for 500 euro, and you buy a ThinkCentre Tiny, are you going to get anything even close to comparable specs in the ThinkCentre? I would think your 2018 Mini would likely have a comparable-or-better CPU spec, and more RAM - both of which will be helpful if you’re running VMs and Docker containers.

Assuming that your time has a value greater than $0, it might make more sense to just leave the VMs in place on the Mini (where they’re presumably already running and stable) and just migrate your other data to the new computer.

[Wixtech]

+1 for UTM and the QEMU project it is based on. I’m using UTM with 3 Linux VMs and they perform really well on my M1 MBA (16/512). So far I have used Debian server, Ubuntu and Kali (all ARM64). Your mileage may vary of course, but I’ve been really pleased with this config. Please note I don’t have a Windows VM since getting my hands on Windows for ARM has eluded me.