this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Bought a used corpo mini pc and I wanna set up a local server for NAS backups and general tinkering with containers

It's it worth looking at anything but my beloved debian? Does Ubuntu bring anything novel to the table? Fedora?

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[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

If youre going to use docker or similar it doesn't really matter what base operating system you use, so itd just be the one that has the most up to date packages and smallest footprint.

If you're not going that route you could try using nixpkgs which replaces docker containers with programmatic modules. NixOS on the server allows for declarative configuration with rollbacks and transactional upgrades built right into the system. You can also orchestrate docker containers in nixpkgs.

[–] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

NixOS does look compelling

I don't want to run something like arch that needs adult supervision. I want something to set and forget while I'm not actively tinkering

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 6 points 4 days ago

There's a large up-front cost in learning nixpkgs and the language, but once you do it becomes really intuitive on how to manage your system. You can get started with installing it on-top of an existing system (https://lix.systems/) and going through https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ which explains the nixpkgs design from first principles.

[–] Hermes@hexbear.net 5 points 4 days ago

+1 for NixOS, Lix or Guix might also work, but I haven't tried them.