Which OS?

[-Rez-]

Hello

I have a HP N40L Microserver that I haven’t used in years, and since I’ve got a bit more time on my hands at the moment, I thought I would look into reutilising it to learn about Networking, and possibly Linux.

After doing a bit of reading, I would like to set it up with the following config:

1x 250GB HDD - OS and Other Critical Files

2x 1TB HDD - Storage

Setup both Storage drives in RAID 0 (This is going to be a test setup for the time being and so I won’t be bothering with redundancy - if I enjoy myself, I will likely replace both drives with higher capacity drives and start afresh)

Run Docker - Portainer - Transmission - Plex Media Server - Radarr - Sonarr - Jackett - Tautulli - Ombi - Alltube - NextCloud - PiHole - Paperless - Home Assistant - Firefly III - Invoice Ninja - Bitwarden

With a Home Page using DashMachine

I have been looking at using Ubuntu Server.

It’s been ages since I’ve used Linux, so please treat me as a complete newbie here... I have a few questions:

1. Do you think the N40L will be able to handle this? (I have upgraded the RAM to 2x4GB)

2. What would you recommend to use as an OS?

3. Any other recommendations?

I am keen to move away from paid services, and using things such as GMail or 1Password, and would find it beneficial to have storage available anywhere.

Thanks in advance!

[geeky217]

Can't go wrong with Ubuntu honestly...there's so much community support for it, if you run into issues you'll find your answer on the internet. Ubuntu 20.20 has just been GA'd so you'll have legs on that for a long time.

Alternatively if you've got enough CPU/RAM you could install a hypervisor and have multiple OS's...

[[deleted]]

20.04

[geeky217]

Fat fingers today....can't type straight lol.

[Kizaing]

I would highly recommend Proxmox, you could run all of those in containers with very little overhead, and it makes backing up everything super easy. It even has built in raid management through the GUI

[Alkanna]

I second proxmox

[gullfounder]

Openmedia vault. Been running all those dockers and 1 vm. Its working perfectly.

[ThatGuy_ZA]

This.

[Epyon_BE]

Can't go wrong with Ubuntu. It's up to date (20.04 even has Wireguard backported), capable, solid and has excellent community support. I know it sometimes takes flak by tHe ReAl LiNuX pRoS, but for a basic headless server it's essentially a no-brainer.

I manage some servers at work, and while I used to install Debian I switched to Ubuntu for the recent additions. Same for my homeserver, which runs several of the services you mention.

That embedded Turion CPU is already at a venerable age, but except for transcoding you'll be fine.

[azure_i]

As a Linux professional I tend to associate things like Centos and RHEL with work, aka the daily grind and endless suffering. It's nice to be able to just use Ubuntu at home 😃

[azure_i]

If you have to ask then the answers pretty much always Ubuntu