Why spend the extra money for a Nucleus rather than a less expensive desktop computer?

[Marian (I stand with Ukraine)]

That may be, but it would still result in degraded performance when you need “the most demanding DSP”. If hardware can’t take it, you can’t go around the laws of physics.

[Andrew_Webb]

True, but you make the “failure” a good deal more graceful. A good thing if it only happens once in a while.

[David_Hamby]

Those who like the leave it on the shelf and it minds itself capability of Roon Nucleus would find it easy to justify. The Nucleus is an Intel NUC board in a custom case.

But Nucleus is more. It is the Nucleus Linux distribution pared down to the essentials to run Roon Core and the Core end of the Roon transport. Roon Labs keeps this in-house curated and built Linux distribution up to date. The extra money includes a set-aside to keep Roon Nucleus Linux updated.

If you can do basic program installation (I can) and can update a Linux distribution (i Can but I forget), Roon Core on a Mac or on Linux is a good way to go. Just remember to keep your patches up.

[Russell_Radoff]

I got a used i3NUC off ebay for $125 this week. Attached a 2G USB external drive. Took me under 20 minutes to get the Rock software loaded and running. I’m truly stunned at how easy it was and how seamlessly it works.

I’m streaming to my stereo with an old raspberriPi + Audioquest dragonfly USB DAC.

All in, < $500 for a DIY Core + streamer. Sounding fantastic!

Installing the software on the NUC was surprisingly easy - I would not hesitate to give the DIY route a try.

[Michael_Garnett]

If keeping mac mini consider optical rendu roon endpoint

[Mike_O_Neill]

Didn’t @danny say that the Roon OS was not a Linux distro rather an OS built from ground up using elements of Linux

Can’t think where I saw it but its here on the forum somewhere

[Geoff_Coupe]

You may be thinking of this post:

Roon Optimized Core Kit (previously reported as Roon OS)

@Yoshihiro_Sasaki: You can’t compare it to Volumio. Volumio runs quite a bit of software written by various third parties that don’t know about each other. This thing is Roon only, all throughout. The performance is incredible. Boot in <2 seconds, full update (post-download) in ~30s. Everything is snappy and built from the ground up for Roon. It doesn’t feel like Linux, or any other operating system. It feels like Roon. There is no point in hooking up a keyboard or display – you can’t do anyt…

[Mike_O_Neill]

Yep something like that , Roon from ground up

[Marian (I stand with Ukraine)]

It’s still Linux-based though. They didn’t write their own OS, did they?

[Mike_O_Neill]

As far as I gather they did , maybe @danny can confirm

[Marian (I stand with Ukraine)]

Writing an OS is an entirely different endeavor than writing an app. Besides, these paths (pasted from the linked post) look suspiciously similar to Linux:

Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root                 1.9G     93.4M      1.7G   5% /
/dev/sda3                 1.9G     82.7M      1.8G   4% /roon/app
/dev/sda4                55.0G    182.3M     54.8G   0% /roon/data

[Geoff_Coupe]

It’s Linux, yes, but it is not based on any distro - it is built from the ground up. See:

Does ROCK use TRIM on USB SSDs?

Ther is no distro upon which ROCK is based. It’s a built-from-scratch system. First the compilers are built, then those compilers are used to build every byte running on the system from source. The bootup, the rootfs, and the typical process table looks very different from any other distribution. We do not trim external drives at all. We also do not trim the database partition on the m.2 SSD, nor do we mount with -o discard. These both lead to performance issues. One might think this degrade…

[Marian (I stand with Ukraine)]

Thanks Geoff. To be clear, you are building Linux source code, right?

[Geoff_Coupe]

Er, I’m not - I’m not a Roon Labs staff member. AFAIK, Roon OS is @danny’s baby…

[Michael_Harris]

Mike Danny meant that they didn’t take a stock Linux distro, but built their own from kernel and the Linux software. It’s still Linux though.

[Wilson_Hines]

I’ve got about $400 in a desktop box running Linux. Roon is the only function of that box. It works perfectly and I never have to do anything but the occasional reboot to install security updates to the OS. Unless you just want a Nucleus, I don’t see a need for the money to be spent like that. I run a HDMI over to TV and run the Roon display too.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

@Geoff_Coupe

it is built from the ground up.

I think he’s just talking about the build process, no doubt a scripted and largely automatic operation.

He didn’t mention whether they were wearing their lucky socks when they did the build, though.

[Mike_O_Neill]

I am not a Linux fundi just going off what I read somewhere on the forum. I thought it was not based on a Linux Distro. Obviously I bow to greeter knowledge

[Paul_Williams]

If you have the room and can isolate it from your listening area, just buy a dedicated reasonably specced desk top computer that you use only for Roon.

I am no techie, so have a computer with Windows also loaded. I do need to ensure occasionally that any Windows updates get run. I use the Roon remote apps on my other devices to control Roon, but use Splashtop to access the desktop computer remotely, when I need to do a Windows update or reboot etc.

This might appear to be a bit clunky to the more tech savvy, but it has worked perfectly well for me.

[Michael_Harris]

Mike, I think we are saying the same thing, just using different words

It is a Linux based system (as it in uses the Linux Kernel) but it is not based off any standard distribution.
They have built their own mini distro only including the tools needed to support Roon.
So it’s Linux, but it runs on a lesser variety of machines, due to not having all the drivers in the world installed. But as has been found by many on the forums it will run on many other non NUC environments if they have the right hardware.