Hey everyone! I'm finally fed up with Win11 and the bullshit that comes with it for the PC it's on.
It's being used as a Jellyfin+arr stack, qbit, Immich, and gaming PC for the living room.
I'm currently in the process of backing up all my important info and am doing research on which distro to use.
I don't mind tinkering, but for this PC, stability is key. I don't want to have to go in and update it every week... I want this one to work with minimal maintenance on my part.
I'd likely update it a few times a year, knowing me.
A few hardware specs:
MSI mobo (I've learned that UEFI can be a pain), 10600k, 2070 gpu, and will have a pool of 3x8tb drives that I would like to have in raid5 (or something similar) for storage (movies, TV shows, and Immich libraries), the OS will have its own drive, and I have a separate SSD that I have been using to store programs, games, yml's for docker, and other such things that get accessed more frequently, but aren't crucial if lost.
I've kinda narrowed it down to either Bazzite or CachyOS.
I've heard that Bazzite can be a little more locked down, which I'm not a fan of, but CachyOS has features I will likely never touch (schedulers, kernels, etc...).
I don't want an upkeep heavy OS. I'm moving away from windows for that reason. Win11 has been a nightmare for me with constant reboots and things not loading up until after I log in. Not to mention driver conflicts and all the other BS that's come with it.
So... What say the hive mind? Is Bazzite going to be too tinker-proof, or is CachyOS just way too much work? Or do I have it all wrong with my perception of both?
Thanks!
Ps: this will be my first full commit to Linux. I've dabbled in the past and am no stranger to CLI... So this will likely be a stepping stone into getting my primary PC onto Linux. Go easy on me lol
My setup is a lot like yours using the same apps. And I actually use Bazzite for my gaming PC.
But I would NOT recommend it for use as a server. It’s a cool distro and gets the job done for gaming. But not suitable for server needs. Also for another reason, Bazzite is immutable which means that it’s not really built to be customizable like other distros. That’s great for ensuring you don’t mess stuff up too bad, but not great for learning and for homelab stuff. You’ll want more customization and the ability to make the OS yours as you find yourself needing to make all kinds of changes as you find new stuff to deploy to it.
Like the other person said here, go with something like Debian. That’s what I am using for my server with the same apps you use.
As a beginner, you’ll find a lot of the guides online for setting up and troubleshooting will often favor Debian and it’ll be easier to do.
Bazzite doesn’t have the same convenience which you will love to have as a beginner learning the Linux space.
If you want to try out some distros, my recommendation is to get yourself a laptop that’s from within the last 5-7 years and you can load up all the different distros on there to get them a test. It’s how I do mine. I got a laptop from work they were going to e-waste and been using it exclusively for Linux for the past 2 years and tried tons of distros on it since.
A lot of people running homelabs choose Debian because it’s like you said. Easy on updates and not prone to shutting down or needing a lot of maintenance and troubleshooting. It just works.
Also, you’ll find that nearly any Linux distro nowadays doesn’t require reboots after updates. I still do them on occasion, but it’s really not necessary and the OS won’t nag you or reboot on its own. I had that frustration with Windows tons of times. Left the house and went to the gym to discover my Windows server rebooted itself that day with zero warning and now I can’t enjoy Plex or my streaming music. That happened to me a couple of times. I have never had that happen with Linux since switching. Only did when we had a power outage, but now I have a UPS and set the computer to auto start when it detects power so that won’t be an issue anymore even after an outage.
Also, if you’re not already doing it, consider using a container like Docker or Podman for your hosted apps. It’s working wonders for me and everything is much easier to control here. It’s also just a great learning experience overall. Management of your apps becomes a lot easier and keeping things contained. My only regret is that I wish I would have started using Docker when I switched to Linux, but the switch after wasn’t too bad. I just had some cleanup to do of the standalone services in transferring to Docker.
I've seen Debian mentioned a couple times now. Is there an ideal fork/repo/tell-me-what-word-to-use-here for what I'm trying to do?
I do have a laptop that would likely work for testing... But other than just firing it up... I have no idea what I should be doing to test it out. Install steam? Docker + a container? I don't really have the time to commit to doing all of that for multiple distros...
All the containers will be dockerized. I'll have to learn the new file structure and change the compose yaml's before I fire them all up, but I can't imagine that'll be too horrible.
I actually really enjoyed learning docker, but it was a huge time sink and I'm trying to mitigate that as much as I can with this migration
Debian ships official live images with desktop environments (KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, GNOME and MATE).
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/
You could try each and see which one you like.
There is also LMDE, Linux Mint Debian Edition. It's not bad.
https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php