Hello selfhosters! I read here a lot, longing for the day to get back into it. I have a little plan to do so I have access to some thin clients with decent enough hardware to run a small file server. I’d like to set one up for myself and as a gift to my partner

I keep getting lost in the jungle of options and incompatibilities so I was hoping to enlist some help in selecting a stack

I’m looking for open source software in the base, maybe truenas but I prefer debian and my partner uses LMDE already.

  • On top of that should be a simple file server for backups/network storage. Some interface for managing storeage would be huge too
  • Wireguard with an interface
  • Having a simple container interface for future features like homeassistant and jellyfin et al is great too.

Open source and free is a must and I want to avoid risk for future lockins and freemium/ripe for enshitification-software as far as possible. And no or at least responsible llm use if that even exists anymore. Happy to shed featues to acheive that in combination with longevity. Is plain debian or even ubuntu the way to go or are there more optimised distros? Or am i just describing fedora with cockpit? Im not lost in linux itself, just overwhelmed with the endless options hoping someone can help me make a plan!

Would you make someone you love a home server?

  • lucas@startrek.websiteEnglish
    3·
    13 hours ago

    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.

    • Kaffeburk@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      4·
      13 hours ago

      I did look at that. Between the giant popup ads and at the time 403 forum I couldn’t tell if it was legit or not. Would you say it is trustworthy and long term?

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        11 hours ago

        I don’t know about long term, but it’s running on my pile of virtual servers and does it’s job just fine. The openmediavault itself is a pretty good web-interface on top of Debian and it’s just configuring the underlying operating system so you can get exactly the same setup by writing configurations manually for the services. OMV is just a convenient tool to manage simple fileshares.

        I use it only for samba and wireguard, so can’t really say if it’s as solid with other extensions, but for me it’s been a decent tool for the job.