I am trying to use my old laptops for self-hosting. One has a 6th gen Intel Core i3 (4GB ram), the other has an 11th gen Intel Core i5 (8GB ram). I have previously tried both ubuntu server and desktop but couldn’t get it to work well. For the former I found it difficult to remote ssh and the latter I had difficulty installing Docker containers. (I’m not very good with the command line)
I would like to find an OS that is easier to setup with less of a neccesity for the command line (I would still like to learn how to use it though, I don’t want to get rid of it entirely!). I’ve heard of CasaOS, is that a good option? It seems quite easy to use. What about other alternatives?
Unraid is great for beginners.
Beginner here (to Linux and networking anyways), running Unraid for about 18 months now. Fully agree, it’s been great for actually getting up and doing useful things quickly and relatively pain free.
Eventually I would like to try working backwards and getting things running on a more “traditional” server environment, but Unraid has been a great learning tool for me personally.
It’s like… Maybe some folks learned to overhaul an engine before they got their driver’s license, but lots of people just need to a car to get to work and back today, and they can learn to change their oil and do a brake job when the time comes.
Not going anywhere near unraid so long as your (very expensive) license is tied to a USB stick.
your (very expensive) license is tied to a USB stick
Not true. You can link it to your Unraid.net account using Unraid Connect: https://docs.unraid.net/account/link-key/
Sure, it’s not perfect, but still the best option for beginners.
Does Unraid still use JBOD with a single parity disk or have they moved to a sane drive layout?
Still the same but afaik they now somewhat support running zfs
Other than ZFS as someone mentioned already, they also offer dual drive parity now. IMO it’s a good balance to also allow a very flexible and easily expandable array.
I believe all of these are actually just running Debian as the actual OS underneath, but they give you a webui that makes deploying apps easier.
Of these three, I like the look of Cosmos the most. Seems to be security focused and comes with a reverse proxy and a built in SSO solutions. That’s something that’s usually a pain in the ass to set up yourself.
There’s technically that stupid ass LTT OS but I’m purposely leaving that one out.
Not that I’m using them, but what about these two?
Maybe you might find home in one of those NAS ootimized distros like Openmediavault, truenas, unraid. If not CasaOS or old good Debian with portainer.
Just from the handful of OSs I’ve tried, I’d suggest Ubuntu desktop again.
As for docker, I’d say to get docker and docker compose setup. Once you’re running in docker compose, adding machines is often as simple as editing some markup in a text editor.
But my final suggestion is to crawl before you walk before you run. Start slow in the terminal. Instead of using your file explorer, navigate directories using the terminal and then open the directory you need into the file explorer using the terminal.
Want a new file? Use
touch. Want a new directory? Usemkdir. Eventually, it’ll become annoying to open a file from your explorer when you could just open it from the terminal. Then, you’ll get annoyed with text editors and want to reduce your context switches by using vim.Also,
--helpis your best friend when trying to figure out commands. You got this! Feel free to send me a message if you wanna chat and have any questions when you’re ready to start dipping your toes. I’m far from an expert, but I’ve made some progress of my own and eventually we might learn a thing or two together.I ended up installing Debian since Yunohost can’t install and my old laptop doesn’t meet the hardware requirements of TrueNAS Scale
By the way, you can still run the Yunohost installer ontop of your Debian install… If you want to… It’s Debian-based anyway so it doesn’t really matter if you use its own install media or use the script on an existing Debian install. Though I feel like adding: If you’re looking for Docker… Yunohost might not be your best choice. It’s made to take control itself and it doesn’t use containers. Of course you can circumvent that and add Docker containers nonetheless… But that isn’t really the point and you’d end up dealing with the underlying Debian and just making it more complicated.
It is a very good solution if you don’t want to deal with the CLI. But it stops being useful once you want too much customization, or unpackaged apps. At least that’s my experience. But that’s kind of always the case. Simpler and more things automatically and pre-configured, means less customizability (or more effort to actually customize it).
Ah got it. I’ve installed debian since yunohost had issues installing for whatever reason. Weird.
thanks! Maybe I could check out cockpit and portainer too…
Might want to use dockge instead of portainer.
https://github.com/louislam/dockge
Portainer has… Weird issues.
What kind of issues?
Ive had several stacks just fail to deploy in portainer.
Copy pasting the composes then running them as vanilla yamls or in dockge they worked entirely fine.
Can’t remember the exact compose files but I remember they were Linux server containers. No idea what the issue is/was since its been years.
dockge
Not knocking Dockge, but I have to say I was underwhelmed coming from Portainer. It obviously works for a lot of people, so I might just be ‘special’.
I mean its not really meant to be special. Just a good management frontend.
I meant that I’m special as in incompetent, not that the app was special.
I went with Truenas Scale and was pleasantly surprised it needed no command line kung fu
TrueNAS scale seems like the perfect option, the only downside is that my old laptops don’t meet the hardware requirements
Like RAM?
Not that important. I ran it with ¼-½ of the recommended RAM (1GB RAM per TB)
I personally use Debian. For your case, you can install lightweight desktop environments such as XFCE.
Honestly from my point of view after reading your post, you don’t have a terminal or operating system issue, it feels like you are new to self-hosting and don’t know how to start configuring from scratch.
Ideally you want to look for documentations or keep asking for online help. For example, with installing docker, you would want to refer to this: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. Welcome to system admin life, where you spend more time reading/understanding than configuring.
Personally, you can even use AI Chatbot to help you with stuff, just be specific on the system you are on, the goal you are trying to achieve and the problem you are tring to solve.
Which brings me to answer your next point about CasaOS: It exists so that you can skip most of the ‘system admin life’ step. It skips almost all the setup you would have needed to do on a fresh machine, and just leaves configurations. The downside is usually it eats up more resources than a self-configured install since it comes with redundant features you are unlikely to use.
TLDR; Pre-configured OS such as CasaOS is a solid choice if you just want to set it up and be done with it. If you are here to really learn about system admin stuff, then pick any of the Linux Operating system (Debian-derivatives recommended) with a lightweight DE.
Happy self hosting :v
Okay, so CasaOS is easier to set up (but uses more resources and I won’t learn sysadmin stuff) whereas using something like Debian is a bit harder to set up (but uses less resources and learn more!).
Think I might try CasaOS on my 11th gen laptop and plain Debian on my 6th gen laptop and see which I prefer
I was in the same spot about 3 years ago and I started with Unraid. Got me into docker and dipping my toes into command line stuff.
Honestly though you’re going to quickly outgrow your old laptops…
Ubuntu. Many will disagree but, Debian flavors are a way smoother experience from the start and Ubuntu has a ton of community support. You’ll rarely find an issue no one found and solved before you.
Ubuntu has gone downhill a lot in the last decade. I no longer can recommend it. Yes there is a large community, but they make too many questionable decisions and so doing anything “different” will be hard.
Yeah, I don’t recommend settling on it, but I stand by learning on it. It will be the most frictionless. It’ll ease you into resolving hairy problems in a way that is less discouraging, because they’re not quite as hairy.
Anything but Ubuntu for the most part
Mint, Fedora, Rocky or whatever else
Would absolutely not recommend fedora as a first distro.
Fedora better than Ubuntu in a lot of ways
Also with Fedora 42 there is a entirely new installer so it is much easier to setup.
It is a testing ground for new features. It is literally one of the worst beginner distros. Shit breaks constantly. That is not good for beginners. Just because you like it doesn’t make it good for beginners.
We’re not talking about what distros are good. We are talking about what is good for beginners.
Have you even used Fedora recently? It is well tested and focused on being beginner friendly. That wasn’t always the case but it changed a few years ago.
I’m done arguing. Not gonna respond to whatever fedora fanboy nonsense to follow.
Ubuntu holds around 30 percent of the Linux desktop market. Fedora sits around 1 to 2 percent. Ubuntu focuses on Long Term Support stability, massive community documentation, seamless hardware driver support, and minimizing breakage for new users. Fedora deliberately pushes bleeding-edge kernels, experimental libraries, and rapid changes that regularly introduce breakage. Beginners do not need the newest kernel version or experimental features. They need stability, predictability, easy troubleshooting, and access to a massive community when things go wrong. Fedora is excellent for intermediate users who know how to fix their own problems. It is irresponsible to recommend a testing ground distro to someone who is still learning how to use the terminal.
If Fedora were actually a good beginner distro, it would dominate beginner spaces like r/linux4noobs, It does not. Fedora is respected, but it is not designed for beginners. Even Fedora’s own documentation assumes technical competence that a first-time Linux user will not have.
It is objectively not a good distro for beginners. Not even Fedora thinks it’s a good distro for beginners. Your arguments make no sense. I certainly don’t care to hear anymore of them.
Good day.
It is ok to admit you are wrong. Fedora wasn’t always the project it is today and at one point it was purely for testing. I get the impression that you’ve either never used Fedora or haven’t used it in a very long time.
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/
Not everyone needs the latest stable of everything. That’s ok but I also didn’t just list Fedora. It is just a option to consider if you want a up to date system that’s well tested.
YUNOhost is designed for this. You can do almost everything graphically via the webadmin. Mine has been running for a couple of years and I’m very happy with it. I have email, XMPP (both of which were installed out of the box), a website, file sharing and a few other things. There are a tonne of apps available, including Fediverse instances, Nextcloud. It’s a very cool thing to have available for making self-hosting more accessible.
YUNOhost
Early on sometime, I deployed Yunohost. At the time there were apps, but the catalog was sparse. I happened upon it again in a search for something else about a week or so ago. Wow! The devs have been really developing it at a cyclical rate. I was impressed. For someone just starting out and trying to get their toes wet, I could see Yunohost being a good starting point.
Hey :) I’m not giving you any recommendations but want to give you my personal experience !
5 years ago I had absolutely no clue about Linux/CLI/networking/docker… You name it ! And I also wanted to repurposed and old laptop as a server.
The first distro I installed on my server was Debian ! Why? Because I remembered my brother said something along the line: “Every server infrastructure is run by Debian or a Debian derivative”. So this sounded like the perfect thing to install as a server distro :) !
5 years later I’m still running Debian on this old laptop and it’s going strong ! Never did it failed me except if I did something wrong over the CLI !
As you guessed it, you will need some degree of proficiency on the command line specially if you install your distro without a graphical user interface, which I would recommend… Yes, the CLI isn’t easy to beginning with and you will do some mistakes that will need a full reinstall of your system… But before you learn to move, you learn to stay up right on your legs and this involves a lot a failing !!
It’s not mandatory, you can install a lightweight GUI and take your time. There are a lot of application with good UI which will help you out ! However, not once did I regret to take the harder route and learned so many things along the way ! After this amount of time in the CLI, I can say I’m getting quite good In navigating my system, keeping it healthy and alive :p !
Okay, If it’s a matter of time I get it ! We only have 24h a day and most of this time is already spend at work/school, family time, friends, sleep, eat ! If you’re lucky enough to have 2 hours to spare to tinker arround, a UI is a good idea to keep a healthy balance between all your personal activities ! But keep in mind, both are thorny and have their fair share of issues and debug time.
Last words, have fun with your system :)
thanks for sharing your experience :D
Windows Server 2022
You can install some Linux distro and then download a docker management web UI like coolify. Requires little terminal knowledge. Though you should learn the terminal.
