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?

  • Kaffeburk@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    32·
    14 hours ago

    Maybe I don’t know myself! I suppose it boils down to understanding the whole stack. Too many times I’ve decided ”im gonna do distro A! And Y program. Great. Lets add Z. Oh. Outdated or incompatible without ninja moves. But flawless on distro B” Do i then virtualise, make ninja moves or swap distro? This makes me abandon it again.

    For context I’ve gone from being the early linux adopter self hosting game servers on centos but I’m fairly stagnant since 10 years. I deegoogled but never replaced the infra. These days I barely open my laptop except for chores and work. Im back to using gmail for official purposes. But I also desperately want to break out of the phone/surveillance eco system

    Now when I’ve been trying to look for solutions theres the added AI jungle. I was reading up on easyNas which seemed to tick all my boxes but it appears new and reliant on claude… so that would require me to look into how they handle that. Which feels insurmountable.

    Im looking for the ”simple recommendation for grandparents” but for me, linux knowledgable but information overloaded. Ideally I can support my partner in a gui over the phone, should the need arise.

    How did you make your stack and how easy to manage is it? Whats your favourite server distro and do you use any interface for it?