this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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What OS is best for a beginner to degoogle? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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?

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[–] zipping2583@lemmy.world 44 points 2 months ago (6 children)

If you know how to use containers then go for debian as the server OS and run everything you need as containers.

Debian is community based distro, very stable, major updates every few years, ubuntu and other distros use it as a base.

Get familiar with working on the command line, try nano as an easy text editor und use docker compose.

I did not test TrueNAS, I do know the scale version can run containers too, but I do not know how stable ur usable it is. You should go for the classic linux approach with Debian. Much more fun to learn :)

[–] Kuro@programming.dev 12 points 2 months ago

I can only second that. Its basically exactly my setup. Debian as stable base and every service as docker via docker compose. This way your system is stable and your services can upgrade as much as they like.

Only difference is that i use micro as editor. But thats just details.

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