I want to make a server for hosting media through Jellyfin, and maybe some Nextcloud functionality. I prefer to use containers, but something like TrueNAS’ extensions/plugins sound good as well. This is my first server, so I don’t know what to choose. My possible options are:
- Debian
- Ubuntu
- Fedora
- TrueNAS Scale Which one should I choose? I am fine with using either Docker or Podman. (Edit: The server will be running on an old laptop with a single drive slot.)
Debian
As someone who doesn’t know as much about the differences, why?
Say debian vs ubuntu
There’s no reason to use Ubuntu for this scenario. Debian will be cleaner, simpler and easier to support long term. Ubuntu complicates things and there are no benefits to compensate that for OP’s use case.
Debian is (rightfully) known for being lightweight and very stable. Particularly with older hardware, while still being quite compatible with newer hardware. Their long-running release cycles tend to not break whenever updates do roll out. Ubuntu is Debian based as well, its focus however is on user friendliness and usability, especially on the GUI front. Ubuntu server is perfectly fine, but it’s heavy handed compared to a minimal Debian installation with just a handful of packages selected purposefully by the user for the task it is intended for. There have also been more vocal complaints about whatever Canonical is trying to do with snaps/snap store.
Most beginners with Linux I would more encourage to try Debian for its stability and speed because it’s a great platform to learn Linux on as well as experiment with whatever goal they have by way of packages and projects available all over the open source side of the web.
I agree w what others have said. Just some personal background: started with Ubuntu (well technically I started with Suse, then then Ubuntu). But I found on the server, Ubuntu required a lot of manual upkeep. Debian was just always worked, never had to think twice about it.
Honestly, I would say because you just have less struggle. I had just a lot more problems when I was using Ubuntu instead of Debian. But I thinks it’s mostly personal preference
Debian
Probably Debian or Ubuntu
It doesn’t matter what your host os is, if you’re using docker. Choose whichever one you like more
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters LTS Long Term Support software version LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage VPN Virtual Private Network
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Never not going to mention NixOS. :)
You just need to set
services.jellyfin.enable = true;in your system configuration and that’s it. It’s not containers, but it’s better than containers.I haven’t had the time to look into NixOS… but damn that’s just fucking magical…
For a home server, I personally prefer Unraid (which is built on top of Slackware). It has a pretty good UI for managing Docker containers, and also supports KVM (built-in) and LXC (via a plugin).
Based on that generic request, you’re just going to get everyone’s personal favourite server OS here. You’ll need to give more details to get something tailored to your needs.
True, but everyone’s favorite so far is debian
As it should be.
I’m running Fedora Server + Cosmos Cloud. Freaking awesome. Fedora Server comes bundled with Cockpit, which makes admin work much easier, and Cosmos Cloud makes Docker very easy, and automates your security.
Everybody is so quick to suggest Debian (and it’s a fine choice), but Alpine is great for such things, as well. It’s blazing fast, frequently updated, has most packages you could ever want in a server environment (not that it matters if you’re planning on using containers). I’ve been using Alpine for years as my docker host, and not once have I thought “man, I wish it was debian instead”.
I’ve been using Debian as my main server OS for a long time, but yeah I’ve started using Alpine for lightweight hosts for a single app/docker lately. Especially on proxmox with the pve-helper-scripts you can spin up an Alpine container or VM with Docker in a few seconds.
Using a debian base (OMV6) with docker. Container is maintained by linuxserver.io
No issues so far beyond myself botching permissions but anyone competent should be able to do it.I love how every answer so far is Debian.
Debian is the correct answer.
Debian’s great for this.
I’m also running NextCloud (the official AIO Docker image) on Debian. Great for that too.
I tried truenas and was at first enamored but felt quite limited when it came to using docker compose. There are no official ways for using it. Additionally because it uses kubernetes under the hood it’s not as easy to go under the hood to make it work, as it requires knowledge of that in addition to docker. There is an unofficial docker compose package but there is almost no documentation that I could find and it seems to be largely unmaintained nowadays.
The other OS are good candidates, though through my research, if you are after reliability, people seem to prefer Debian with its more robust validation of updates.
I’m here mostly because I’m setting up my own homelab and I’m preparing for making use of Alpine Linux, which has no desktop environment which makes it particularly fast to boot. Additionally it is very robust, has decent documentation and allows for quite some customization but requires to learn a bit about how to make it work. With its barebone structure, it is more secure as it has a smaller attack surface and you only install what you need. Perhaps an alternative for you to consider?
Edit: to keep some sanity while needing to manage your homelab, make sure to put some weight on an os you are familiar with. I have juggled for months between OSs to find what does what I want but it has been a long battle of learning everything from scratch every time. Having tried proxmox, truenas, xcpng, and now hopefully settling with Alpine and zfs. Go the more sane way, any of those first three will work just fine.
Whatever you’re most comfortable with. It’s a simple enough ask that you can do it in Ubuntu server or Debian quite easily.
I would recommend at least using docker but you don’t have to.
Truenas isn’t very forgiving with drive configuration. I really like it but it isn’t great for randomly adding drives here and there. Unraid might be a better choice for home usage. I have never had good luck with their built in app stuff but I’ve also never really tried past it not doing what I want.
I run truenas with a ubuntu server vm and docker some stuff in that. I also run proxmox on another server and a dev server running Ubuntu server that I docker things on.
