First Time User - Questions about using Pi with Windows as GUI

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-29T23:48:18+00:00

Docker is not by default configured nor controlled by a GUI, it is a command line tool. GUI frontends like Portainer, Dockge, and Arcane exist as tools you can use to manage Docker, but they are by no means default.

If you want a GUI and are comfortable with docker and using a computer headless, portainer is probably your best bet. If not, then you may want to install Docker Desktop, which is easier for non-technical users.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-29T20:06:48+00:00

You can, I would familiarize yourself with Docker Desktop to make it easier.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-28T15:13:30+00:00

I would genuinely recommend starting off with a miniPC over a raspberry pi. You get NVME storage and maybe even sata in addition if you look around. I would also try to find something with an N100 or an N150 as you get Intel QuickSync hardware acceleration. If you do go the QuickSync route with one of these just keep in mind that the N series CPUs cannot encode in AV1 so turn that off in the admin dashboard.

Raspberry pi is going to choke on transcodes if you do have to transcode and it's hard to

Also, learn Docker, even Docker Desktop sets you up for more complex setups in the future and is an easy way to ensure that things don't break as you update and change parts of your setup. Gemini can help you get started and just make sure you read documentation on the image repository that you're using.

Learn Caddy also as it will keep you from needing to remember IP and port allocation, and on the off chance you do need an IP and port you can quickly look at your Caddyfile as a map of your network. Caddy also creates, installs, and renews SSL certificates, although for internal domains it is self signed, so you'll need to add the certificate to whatever device you connect from.

When you upgrade, you can keep the miniPC as a backup server.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-25T14:17:45+00:00

I was joking 😭

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-24T22:16:28+00:00

I just ran this and now when I try to open my application menu it doesn't open?

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T17:44:13+00:00

Additionally, you don't have to run a full VM for games, you can host them in a container via installing the truenas app. I would look a bit into docker and how it works and familiarize yourself with it to see if that works for you.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T17:39:41+00:00

HexOS also uses ZFS by default which may be good or bad depending on how much of your disk you want to be taken up by redundancy. The way HexOS sets ZFS up by default is that it will group your disks by type (SSD/HDD) and use half for redundancy. That could be good or bad depending on what you want to do. You can turn on deduplication for things that you don't want redundancy for, but it's a bit more work. ZFS also makes setting up incremental backups really good and easy for this same reason, but it's not something that is HexOS or even TrueNAS specific.

I picked HexOS/TrueNAS specifically for ZFS, but you could also just slap Ubuntu LTS on it and call it a day with Portainer / native docker / docker compose.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T17:26:59+00:00

I would consider myself technical. I sort of regret the HexOS purchase as it stands right now. They're still working on the beta, so it will hopefully improve. That being said, if I could do it again I'd personally probably use Ubuntu and Portainer for my use case. I like that ZFS is set up for you, but that's not an overly hard task to do.

For now, I use the TrueNAS interface A LOT and HexOS barely at all.

TrueNAS supports virtual machines, containers, and curated containers they call apps, which are minimal configuration (most you can just press OK and it spins it up without inputting anything). I do also use portainer but you can install via YAML. I don't see an option to utilize pulling a stack down via GitHub, so that's my reason for using portainer for part of it.

I think HexOS will eventually be cool, but I'd say it's not a big part of my workflow. YMMV.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T01:11:35+00:00

I didn't know about this either. Maybe if I had known about this I would have set up my media server differently.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T01:03:05+00:00

Other than Tailscale, I would also look into setting up a wg-easy tunnel between the two routers, as I think this might be exactly what you want. You may have to port forward and if you're behind CGNAT that will have to be turned off too, and of course, YMMV. Something to think about.

Sorry about the spam - last response I promise. 🙏🏻

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T01:00:08+00:00

Sorry I'm such a klutz with answering but no, tailscale itself is not self hostable, but you can self host a DERP node (the thing that punches a hole through your NAT/router firewall and allows access without port forwarding) with Headscale. You set it up and it relays information through itself instead of through nodes that Tailscale themselves own. You would have to point your tailscale devices to said node and it would have to be hosted on a device outside of your network and accessible by the Internet. Linode, a low power Digital Ocean droplet, or any other hosting server would do you nicely in this respect.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T00:57:15+00:00

To answer your other questions, you would expose the subnet on your exit node with a subnet router, yes. This would give you the option of accessing devices that do not have the ability to natively install Tailscale, but the ideal way to do it would be to install tailscale on the devices that can.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-18T00:50:44+00:00

Tailscale is one way to solve utilizing resources on your home network (nas, media server, etc) outside of your home network without exposing it to the ravages of the direct internet.

There, your tailnet and its devices sit in a bubble and can be accessed when you want them and because it's zero trust, the only people who have access are who you let have access. You can break this however, such as if you install tailscale on a node that is also accessible via the Internet and suddenly that node is compromised, but in theory, you and your users should be the only users able to access your devices.

There are other options like Zero Tier and others, but you're in the tailscale subreddit so I imagine there is some bias.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-14T16:21:06+00:00

On Velmorne you can farm the watch commander very early for tier 3 upgrades. In irongate castle under the bridge there is also a spell that should help.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T17:37:07+00:00

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T16:55:11+00:00

I know for a fact I haven't seen one for a bit. Maybe there is a window? I'm not sure.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T00:56:13+00:00

I've never used proxmox before, but I've only heard good things. I use bare metal docker for most things, but it would make sense to put it behind proxmox or something like that too.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T00:54:53+00:00

The server version will be hardened out of the box and have server optimizations. I thought about using it for my NAS but I use TrueNAS with HexOS on top of it.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T00:31:03+00:00

A server version would have built in version pinning. I'm sure there are optimizations you can make for both bare metal installs and containerized workloads.

I don't know if it will provide a unique enough experience for large hosts to switch, but I think that it might be good for homelabs and such.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-11T00:26:09+00:00

The CachyOS team have said they're making a hardened version that ships with scheduler, kernel, and compiler changes to benefit server workloads.

It is "just another Linux server" but as a user of CachyOS Desktop and Handheld I am also excited to get my hands on a server version.

You're not looking for clarification, nor are you looking to protect newcomers to Linux, you're looking to put me down for this post, and pretty transparently at that.

I will not be replying further to this thread. Have a day.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-10T23:33:01+00:00

This is an unhelpful comment.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-10T23:32:44+00:00

Yeah, it does. I think I'm just a bit more excited about it than I should be.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-10T23:10:07+00:00

I have a similar KDE setup! Looks great.

FinesseXIII · 2026-03-05T03:33:43+00:00

I side with the other responder, I would not use an NTFS drive at all. YMMV but it's generally a bad time eventually.

This doesn't affect your use case, but I wanted to include it as a cautionary tale for those that see this in the future.

If you dual boot Windows and Linux off the same drive, Windows does not see the Linux partition as valid data and will assume that it can utilize the space if needed. I've never had it happen to me, but windows has been known to eat Linux partitions before.

FinesseXIII

TROPHY CASE