So toying with the idea of getting a raspberry pi to fiddle with, never had one b4 dont where to start, what should i get?
am thinking of something simple to start with like hosting a password manager or vpn server, i have been looking at pi 3b
any advice appreciated
I'd suggest a Pi 4 4GB as a minimum if you really want a Pi. Decently fast and can boot to USB so you can use a cheap SSD instead of an SD card.
If you just want to play Linux and host a few things, then consider a 1Lt PC such as a Dell micro , Lenovo Tiny , HP ..... etc.
These will often idle at a few watts, I haver several at 8-10W when the are powered.
Usually they will take M.2 / SATA drives, standard SODIMM memory so you can run something like proxmox and then load it up.
Even the CPU's can be swapped in most and they are pretty cheap second hand.
The GBit Lan is actually GBit.
By the time you buy a Pi, case, heatsinks, power supply, SD card, micro HDMI cable etc. you have pretty much covered the cost of a 1LT PC.
Pi is great for projects where you need to interface with sensors etc by GPIO etc.
Micro PC's are much better as servers / hosts
Edit: Also there is a version of PI OS that runs on a standard PC so you can have the same desktop experience.
