I am trying to use my old laptops for self-hosting. One has a 6th gen Intel Core i3 (4GB ram), the other has an 11th gen Intel Core i5 (8GB ram). I have previously tried both ubuntu server and desktop but couldn’t get it to work well. For the former I found it difficult to remote ssh and the latter I had difficulty installing Docker containers. (I’m not very good with the command line)
I would like to find an OS that is easier to setup with less of a neccesity for the command line (I would still like to learn how to use it though, I don’t want to get rid of it entirely!). I’ve heard of CasaOS, is that a good option? It seems quite easy to use. What about other alternatives?
The command line is an exceptionally useful tool, you may want to spend a little time getting familiar with it and common command line tools that would probably make self hosting almost anything easier.
It’s like wanting to learn to play guitar but not learning how to restring and tune it, sure it’s not necessary but you’re going to be overly dependent on others to do something you could learn for yourself with a little time and patience, and it will probably broaden your perspective on what you can do once you do get familiar with how to pipe commands together and combine basic tools into something more sophisticated and complex.
I misread that as “self-loathing” and the answer was obvious.
The learning curve might be a little high in some regards, but you may want to try NixOS. There are quite a few services ready to enable and customize for self-hosting, and the design makes updating packages fairly simple.
To be clear, NixOS is not a “simple” solution, but it does work well for self hosting.
NixOS doesn’t have a curve, it’s a fucking wall 😆
How is that useful to OP who asked for something “without terminals”? Unless that was a joke.
Because I’ve been using Arch Linux for 15 years and live in the terminal, but even though I like the idea of NixOS, it’s not only scary because it is alien and I have neither motivation nor enough free time to learn a parallel world and gain non-transferable skills for a niche solution. And that with being interested in what NixOS is doing.
I would say it is horrible advice to a novice, unless you want to scare people away from learning terminals and configs and managing an operating system without GUI tools.
😄 Sometimes it’s hard to remember the differential
i tried CasaOS for a quick minute. its decent and just has the basics like setting up any disks and then has an app store. its really just a front end for docker and you can manually input the details of any docker containers that arent in the store
ive mostly been running docker stuff on my Synology nas. cant think of the model number now, 218+ i think, but any of the “plus” models will let you run docker. its very similar to Casa, no messing around with command line stuff. ive been self hosting for 10 years now and never touched the command line so i dont know what people are on about here saying you will have trouble
dietpi is another thing ive used on a few devices, mainly small SBCs and raspberry pi’s, but i think they might have a version that you can install on anything. its basically just debian, and it has a sort of a wizard that helps set up various things like set up disks and install apps. its headless though so no GUI unless you install one, and the wizard is run from the terminal but youre not having to type any commands at least
I am very much a Windows user and my journey went like this:
Raspberry Pi with OMV -> SSH on OMV -> Mostly Terminal on OMV -> Docker + Portainer to deploy containers -> Transition to docker-compose -> Setup my own VM with Debian completely in the CLI (excluding the first setup of the VM)I use Linux (primarily Debian because of Raspberry. I don’t lile what I hear about Ubuntu) usually for VMs/servers and Windows as the client OS
I love the command line. A terminal window is always open on whatever computer I’m using at the moment, even when I was running Windows.
But I also like having a dashboard to see what’s going on, all right in front of me. I have ADHD, and if I can’t see it, then I will forget it exists. I use command line to handle more granular tasks, and have various UIs to help me handle other things, like Proxmox (obvious), Dockge (docker stacks), OMV (NAS), Cockpit (all of my computers have this, really good for remote control), and a few other things I’m forgetting.
Mint or Ubuntu is like Windows but better.
I’m not trying to be unhelpful. My advice would be to steer into the terminal. Bite the bullet. I use arch and alpine for my servers but Fedora would be fine (but SELinux can be a pain with bund mounts)
Probably just go with Fedora with btrfs for snaps. It has lots of support and is a common choice for servers
How do you troubleshoot Alpine? The one time I tried (later needed to use Debian because the OS was not supported) I could almost only find ressources in conjunction with containerization.
Honestly, I’ve had little trouble. The Gentoo Wiki and Void Handbook have a lot of overlap with OpenRC and musl, respectively.
While the documentation could be improved, the overall experience has been quite good and very stable.
I guess you could install cockpit (via Terminal, sorry, but it’s pretty straightforward and there are good guides). After that, you could use the cockpit web interface to deploy docker/podman containers. It’s a bit clunky sometimes, but it does the job purely in UI.
You can also manage updates, backups, etc via cockpit if you install the required modules.
As base, I’d use any stable Linux distro that’s reccomended for server use.
for more info for those interested
I believe all of these are actually just running Debian as the actual OS underneath, but they give you a webui that makes deploying apps easier.
Of these three, I like the look of Cosmos the most. Seems to be security focused and comes with a reverse proxy and a built in SSO solutions. That’s something that’s usually a pain in the ass to set up yourself.
There’s technically that stupid ass LTT OS but I’m purposely leaving that one out.
I went with Truenas Scale and was pleasantly surprised it needed no command line kung fu
TrueNAS scale seems like the perfect option, the only downside is that my old laptops don’t meet the hardware requirements
Like RAM?
Not that important. I ran it with ¼-½ of the recommended RAM (1GB RAM per TB)
I personally use Debian. For your case, you can install lightweight desktop environments such as XFCE.
Honestly from my point of view after reading your post, you don’t have a terminal or operating system issue, it feels like you are new to self-hosting and don’t know how to start configuring from scratch.
Ideally you want to look for documentations or keep asking for online help. For example, with installing docker, you would want to refer to this: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. Welcome to system admin life, where you spend more time reading/understanding than configuring.
Personally, you can even use AI Chatbot to help you with stuff, just be specific on the system you are on, the goal you are trying to achieve and the problem you are tring to solve.
Which brings me to answer your next point about CasaOS: It exists so that you can skip most of the ‘system admin life’ step. It skips almost all the setup you would have needed to do on a fresh machine, and just leaves configurations. The downside is usually it eats up more resources than a self-configured install since it comes with redundant features you are unlikely to use.
TLDR; Pre-configured OS such as CasaOS is a solid choice if you just want to set it up and be done with it. If you are here to really learn about system admin stuff, then pick any of the Linux Operating system (Debian-derivatives recommended) with a lightweight DE.
Happy self hosting :v
Okay, so CasaOS is easier to set up (but uses more resources and I won’t learn sysadmin stuff) whereas using something like Debian is a bit harder to set up (but uses less resources and learn more!).
Think I might try CasaOS on my 11th gen laptop and plain Debian on my 6th gen laptop and see which I prefer
Maybe you might find home in one of those NAS ootimized distros like Openmediavault, truenas, unraid. If not CasaOS or old good Debian with portainer.
For what it’s worth given the age of this thread and disagreement going on in it, I would recommend Unraid.
Easy for a beginner, with enough to take you up to intermediate level: a web GUI for pretty much all the required terminal commands. It’s been around for years, is not going away, but instead getting updated. Works on any old eBay hardware and most of all, the community there are very supportive of beginners. There’s also lots of YouTube tutorials.
It ticks all the boxes for easy self hosting. It’s just not for Linux protocol purists.
FWIW I’ve been using Ubuntu desktop with CasaOS for a couple of months now to host Nextcloud, Jellfin, Immich and a few other bits and bobs with absolutely no issues at all so far!
Windows Server 2022
