So I have a retired but still very serviceable PC that I intend to use as my first home server. I gave two basic goals in self-hosting:
- Host family media through Jellyfin, etc. This would include tv, music, and possibly books as well. Many of these will be managed through the Arr apps.
- Degoogle my phone - I’m beginning by replacing Photos with Immich, but hope to also use Home Assistant, backup other phone data such as messages media, shopping lists, etc. I hope to replace Google storage/backup with Proton Drive.
So the question is what OS should I set up to run that? My proof of concept was an immich container running in xubuntu on an old laptop. I chose Xubuntu because I like the availability of documentation and community support for Ubuntu like distros, but wanted a lower powered alternative for the older device.
It seems to be working well, but I’ve had a few hiccups trying to update it, and I’ve heard that once you get into it, Linux distros like Ubuntu are not very user friendly for self-hosting as a beginner.
So is it better on the whole for a beginner to have a popular distro with lots if documentation and step by step guides, or to have a purpose-built OS like TrueNAS that might be more straightforward, but with less support?
If it’s just a server, Alpine and docker will do most things with good reliability and security.
Otherwise I’ve actually always used void and arch. While those aren’t typical choices for a server, it shows that it’s hard to go wrong.
Choose a distribution that appeals to you and it’ll work great.
For this use case, alpine sounds good.
Honestly, alpine is a great distro, but not really something I would recommend for a beginner. There is less documentation and troubleshooting guides out there tailored to this distro than for example debian or ubuntu.
I would either recommend using Debian or a derivative of that if they want to get their toes wet. Alternatively a complete solution with GUI tools for if they just want to start using their own stuff now.
Yeah I hear that, good point.
Arch has great documentation but also a bit more config.
I would vote for Fedora over debian though. Debian packages are so far out of date that it becomes a pain and copr works quite well.