I don’t see a problem with the idea as long as you’re aware you’re committing to be the one maintaining it and dealing with any problems that might arise from doing so.

If you’re storing other people’s data (especially photos) you better be extra sure that you have a good backup strategy and a plan to test those backups regularly.

I run a self hosted server for my household and my family gets a lot out of it. I’m not quite sure I’d consider it a gift as much as I do a way to save money and have more privacy and control. To be more blunt, I do not expect my wife would feel happy with me telling her it is a “gift” for her as it is clearly a hobby of mine.

For your question on OS, truenas scale has worked really well for me. If you have comfort running Debian server, that’s a great way to go as well. I think truenas scale would fit you well for one of your specific notes, “Having a simple container interface for future features like homeassistant and jellyfin et al is great too.” I love how easy my containers are to work on and maintain in truenas.

Ultimately, I think you should spin up every OS you are considering and look around first. It would only take a few hours of your time and it’s a very personal choice to a certain degree.

You could do them a solid and set them up with an ad blocker on a cheap SDC, but if you really want a loved one to manage proxmox and learn how to yaml and manage containers, all while learning everything you never wanted to know about networking, IP addresses ports and Linux all at the same time… The best thing you can do is get them interested in figuring it out for themselves. Give them the bug, spread the addiction, don’t give them hardware/responsibility

Well for me, my wife had a ton of pictures laying around, and some scattered on google drive etc…

I basically did a huge scanning project in secret, set up an immich server and surprised her with it. That absolutely is one of her favorite gifts of all time.

Now as far as doing that with someone that didn’t stay in the same house, on an OS I wasn’t already managing… no probably wouldn’t imagine doing that unless the person was already showing signs of interest in managing something like that… in which case it should be done as a “lets build this together” project.

This sounds either like you’re trying to gift someone a bunch of labour, or you’re getting something for yourself in the guise of giving it to someone else.

Get yourself a home server and get your loved one something for them.

No way. MAYBE if they specifically asked me to, but that’s a big maybe. It can be a lot of work to maintain, and they’re probably not going to want to put in the work to do that. It’s like buying them a puppy when they never mentioned let’s before.

You’d be giving both them, and yourself, a job. Not a great gift unless they’re actually into this kind of thing and techy enough to be able to get up to speed. It’s not hands off enough to be given to someone who can’t maintain it themselves.

Would you make someone you love a home server?

Hell no. I have one because I like tinkering and don’t mind maintaining it. My loved ones are not those kinds of people. So then it becomes more of a chore for me and less of a fun personal project.

I think Debian Server + Docker compose. Its the easiest way to get started and has the most documentation for. To me, the OS itself is the least concern - just get something maintainable. Then choose services you want from https://selfh.st/apps/ and have a go with them. Most services give you docker compose scripts so that is by far the easiest way.

If there are two of you with accounts, then I would suggest these:

• Reverse proxy (caddy, nginx, etc)
• SSO authentication (authentik, authelia etc)
• VPN for access (wireguard, netbird, tailscale etc)
• Security (fail2ban, crowdsec, etc)

On top of Home assistant and the Jellyfin / arr stack you mention, I would recommend Immich (google photos), Paperless NGX (letter scanning / management), Vaultwarden (password manager), FMD (find my device server for android phones), and SearNGX (private search engine).

Potential alternatives would be NixOS (fully scripted) and Proxmox (better containerisation but still got to decide what you install on each container, such as Debian + docker). You could also use podman instead of docker compose, which is more secure but a bit more effort to adapt to. However, if access is only through the VPN and you have two users, Debian + docker would be fine.

you want the equiv of a manic pixie dream server

must be free, and have all the options, and be easy!

also, servers are terrible gifts unless the person is expecting to be responsible for a server. kinda lika a dog.

1. Use whatever Linux Distro you want.
2. Install Docker to run containers.
3. Install Portainer for Container Management
4. I am a big fan of NextExplorer as a file server.

Important: Have fun. I feel like you are overthinking this. It’s very easy to remove a service and install a new one if you don’t like it. 😀

Would you make someone you love a home server?

No. Especially no for a non-technical, remote person.

Troubleshooting my lab in the basement is hard enough without having to try some weird screen share app, or telling the person, “press the blinky light button. NO NOT THAT ONE”.

If you want to share the joys of a home lab, do what I did for my technologically impaired in laws - get a wireguard VPN client on a laptop and walk them through (several times) the process of connecting to the VPN, browsing to your services, logging into the services, doing the thing, then disconnecting from the VPN.

• Show them the process while they take notes on the process.
• Let them follow their own notes with minimal help (except to correct the notes) while they do the process end to end.
• Repeat that last step a few times with zero feedback so they build confidence in the process.
• The next day, have them do it again based exclusively on their notes and memory.
• If you’re still in town, wait a full day and repeat the last step a few days later.

My in-laws are now experts at VPN’ing in and interacting with my services.

Its not clear exactly what you’re asking for?

Definitely check out yunohost. No containers, but roughly what you’re asking for imo.

If you are after a Debian based system, with an interface for file server/backups/network storage, with a (web) interface, you are pretty much describing https://www.openmediavault.org/ . Decent plugin ecosystem to set up Wireguard, as well as a web interface to set up docker based containers for anything.