this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
53 points (94.9% liked)

Selfhosted

60281 readers
780 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.