Recommend a distro for a just-works NAS/self hosting machine? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 months ago by CodeMonkey@programming.dev to c/linux4noobs@programming.dev

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I am looking to build a machine to use for file backups and some light media serving (PhotoPrism, Calibre, and the like). My plan is to take a retired desktop, throw in every old drive I have lying around, and merge them with Greyhole.

I am a seasoned Linux user (in containers or on machines being managed by others). I am comfortable with CLI basics and should be able to use the system entirely over SSH and web UIs, so I am fine without a window manager. What I am not fine with is system administration (and do not want to spend time fixing issues that constantly pop-up).

Ideally, I would want to find a distro that I can install by accepting reasonable defaults, configure my storage and my various applications, create a cron job to periodically update packages and reboot the machine, and the machine will just keep working with no intervention on my part. I realize that that is an impossible goal, but I want to get as close as I can.

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[-] Shadow@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

Your os disks should be raid 1. I'd recommend a pair of onboard nvme or cheap ssds for OS. That's the part you don't want to be fighting with if something does go wrong.

It's trivial to replace a drive on zfs if one fails.

Hardware and software are both really reliable these days. If you're running something like proxmox then you also get easy snapshots and rollbacks.

this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025

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