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?
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
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.
Cosmos does look quite good. TrueNAS can’t run on my old laptops so HexOS was never really an option
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
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.
I’m all for command line, but I’m the kind of person who needs a dashboard, otherwise I forget everything. OMV has a solid dashboard and has been really good for me.
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.
If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.
You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.
Could you recommend a source for learning how to use the command line? In the past I struggled with understanding the basic commands and the various flags. I’ve found it difficult to find good documentation, but I would like to learn
TBF ChatHPT is probably your best bet
It’s been a long time since I learned, so I don’t remember exactly what I used, but at a cursory glance, this one looks good:
https://www.terminaltutor.com/
Also, learning to read man pages will help a lot. Here’s an article on that:
https://itsfoss.com/linux-man-page-guide/
I do remember using “terminal cheat sheets” like this:
https://phoenixnap.com/kb/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/linux-commands-cheat-sheet-pdf.pdf
Edit: Comment was in wrong place, refiled as op level comment.
If you’re afraid of t
The least sanctimonious linux shithead
Name checks out
Self hosting is doomed until this isn’t the answer.
A desktop environment is a waste of resources on a system where you’ll only use it to install and occasionally upgrade a few server applications. The RAM, CPU power, and electricity used to run the desktop environment could be instead powering another couple of small applications.
Selfhosting is already inefficient with computing resources just like everyone building their own separate infrastructure in a city is less efficient. Problem is infrastructure is shared ownership whereas most online services are not owned by the users so selfhosting makes sense, but requires extra efficiencies.
Imagine if OP asked: “I want to repair my own car, but I don’t want to open the hood or get under the car. What are my options?”
Obviously there would be some options, but those options would be very limited and not ideal. This is very similar. Self-hosting, like self-repair of a vehicle, requires some foundational knowledge and understanding of your specific hardware, usecase, and needs, as well as the knowledge and ability to bring those things to fruition. There is no single universal answer that applies to everyone, but those skills can be acquired by anyone.
I don’t think self-hosting is any more doomed than self-repair of a vehicle. Not for everyone, but enjoyable and generally optimized for those who participate.
Yeah, this whole “Linux server” thing just isn’t going to take off.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
You know what self hosted projects have been successes? Plex and Home Assistant. You know what projects don’t require the terminal? Plex and Home Assistant.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
Good. Mainstream consumers don’t understand enough about networking and computer security to be trusted to self-host anything beyond desktop applications. And even that is debatable. They’re so bad at it that walled-gardens have become ubiquitous just to keep viruses from running rampant.
Notice that mainstream customers dont self host.
You’re viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services. Who cares if server grade software is terminal only? Its good enough for the companies that sponsor these projects and its good enough for enterprise level users.
You’re viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services.
The only lens I’m viewing this through is one that dares to imagine that the Venn diagram of “computer users savvy enough to care about privacy” isn’t 100% contained within the circle of “computer users savvy with the terminal”.
Quite frankly your stance that the ‘average person’ doesn’t care, when this post is LITERALLY from an ‘average person’ who does, is the one that seems off base on its face.
This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person. Also im viewing this through realistic lenses, enterprise software developers fund TTY server grade software and people like you who complain about that are very rarely the type of people who contribute or make software. Yeah sorry but imagining is worthless unless you can code and your complaints come off as entitled whining.
This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person.
‘Average person’ was in quotes because it’s the language you used to describe someone not comfortable with the command line.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
What? A niche technical hobby isn’t popular among mainstream consumers? Wow!
Mainstream consumers don’t know words “Plex” and “Home Assistant” either. There are already products that target these people. And there are products targeted at technical people. We need diversity.
Self hosting is just an extension of open source software. It’s only goal is being able to run your own backends of apps to not be exploited by major companies. It’s goal is not to be a niche technical hobby, if that’s your goal in its own right, then get a model train or a Warhammer set.
Mainstream consumers don’t know words “Plex” and “Home Assistant” either.
Yes, they do lol. It’s flat out weird to think that the only people who have ever heard of pirating are software developers and server admins who use the command line.
You got into Self Hosting for unreasonable ideological reasons
I got into self hosting to avoid AWS Fees
We are not the same
No. You really don’t want to self host unless you are pretty familiar with how these services work. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up to get hacked.
I mean what’s the point of “self” hosting then?
If you have to be a professional server administrator to host one of these services, then why even have a self hosting community as opposed to just a hosting community for server admins to discuss how to set and configure various services? Is this community dedicated to just discussing the uniqueness of managing a home server without a static IP?
If you want to ride a bike, you need to learn to balance on a bike. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional cyclist.
If you want to self host, you need to learn some basic administration, and that includes the terminal. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional server administrator.
You might be able to get by with some hand holdy solution that offers a few things you can do, but just like riding a scooter is much more limited than riding a bike, using a turnkey solution is much more limited than setting up your own server.
Imagine wanting to self host but refusing to learn how to forward a port. There are just some things you need to learn. Like I said in my original comment, the terminal is not as scary as people make it sound. Right now, you are the person making it sound scary.
It isn’t, self hosting just isn’t for everyone, and it never will be.
Self hosting isn’t likely to ever get to the point of “plug and play”. It’s inherently incredibly flexible and different people will do different things with it. Some people just want NAS. Some people want to build a router. Some people want to have a modest compute farm that they physically own. Some people want a virtualization playground. Or pretty much anything else you can think of, or some combination thereof.
For instance, I custom built a 2-tier + optane cached NAS running proxmox, and I have a handful of old thin clients I can spin up for doing Beowulf things when I feel like it, and I also have another repurposed thin client with an old enterprise-grade SFP+ NIC running pfSense as my router that can support up to 10g (futureproofing).
Self hosting will always remain a hobby thing. Most people won’t give the time need to properly admin their own system and an improperly admined system is a risk that you don’t want to take with your precious data. I can’t blame people for not doing this - there are ball games to watch, saw dust to make, kids to raise, and millions of other things to do with your free time such that you cannot do everything you might want to. Sure most people could learn to do this, but it isn’t a good use of their time.
What the world needs is someone trustworthy and cheap enough to handle data for people who have better things to do. Which is why I have fastmail handle my email. I self host a lot of other things though because I don’t know of anyone I can trust to do a good job for a reasonable price.
Unraid is great for beginners.
Beginner here (to Linux and networking anyways), running Unraid for about 18 months now. Fully agree, it’s been great for actually getting up and doing useful things quickly and relatively pain free.
Eventually I would like to try working backwards and getting things running on a more “traditional” server environment, but Unraid has been a great learning tool for me personally.
It’s like… Maybe some folks learned to overhaul an engine before they got their driver’s license, but lots of people just need to a car to get to work and back today, and they can learn to change their oil and do a brake job when the time comes.
Does Unraid still use JBOD with a single parity disk or have they moved to a sane drive layout?
Other than ZFS as someone mentioned already, they also offer dual drive parity now. IMO it’s a good balance to also allow a very flexible and easily expandable array.
Still the same but afaik they now somewhat support running zfs
Generally, Linux Servers are best administered from a command line. At least in the beginning to set everything up. In turn they are faster on lower hardware as they dont even have a graphical desktop at all so need less resources. You could of course install a windows server OS. They can be fully administered through Remote Desktop and a GUI.
There are multiple projects to make self hosting more accessible (like casaOS). They automate many steps of the setup and then offer you a webUI for further steps. Maybe have a look here https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#self-hosting-solutions
Woah, there’s a lot. Nice that there’s plenty of options!
I run my home media server ( and intel NUC i5, so nothing super powerful) running Ubuntu with CasaOS.
There’s tons of you tube videos to help with CasaOS for self hosting and not just the media side.
I think I only used the terminal to install CasaOS the rest is done from the web gui
Keep in mind the reason why people generally dont run desktop environments on a server is because unessential software uses more resources and increases the chance of a system crash. I would highly reccomend learning how to use a terminal and installing fish (shell) is a great place to start.
User makes specific request
Top comment is ‘Nah you don’t want that, just learn terminal yo’
Fuck every member of the linux community
OP also said they’re willing to learn the terminal:
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!).
They’re essentially asking to start with a working and well-known platform that any Joe Regular can use. In car terms, this would be akin to the Chevy 350 V8. Pretty much every car guy knows that engine and how to make it run well without needing to rebuild the entire thing right off the bat.
What? Am I supposed to lie? For advanced tasks such as running server grade software you need to use a terminal, this is the case for every single operating system. FreeBSD, MacOS, and yes even Windows require knowledge of the terminal for advanced tasks such as running server grade software.
This is Lemmy, not the other place. Please be kinder. No need to abuse people trying to help, especially when OP did mention they wouldn’t mind learning if its easy enough.
Sorry no, I am medically incapable of being kinder to linux fanatics
User asks specifically how to do terminal based things without using the terminal. Fuck you, specifically.
Windows has IIS which has a UI
There’s a reason that’s not very popular outside of corporate intranets.
And you wonder why your desktop adoption is and always will be shit
Desktop? This entire discussion is about server software
No, the entire discussion is about a user that doesn’t want to deal with CLI to self host
There’s really no meaningful difference between linux desktop and server distros like there is in windows, people just run them without the desktop environment to reduce overhead.
Yeah but all self hosting software is TUI, I mean sure you can use a GUI but at the end of the day you’ll need to use a terminal emulator to acturally run the software so there isnt much point in the overhead
I feel OP’s intent was to have as little CLI as possible, not necessarily an absence of it
We’re talking about servers here. Linux is the market leader in server software by an absolutely enormous margin.
It staggers me how dense you are, but the insight into how fanatics lose track of the plot is worth the pain of admission
The thread is about self-hosting with as little CLI as possible, and the only functioning difference between most ‘server’ and ‘desktop’ linux distros is just a prepackaged gui
I mean if that’s what you think, I can tell you don’t work in the industry. Desktop editions generally have more than just a “prepackaged GUI” on top of a server edition.
- Server editions generally have text based installers. This might not seem like a big deal, until you’re installing on a system that doesn’t have any graphics, just a serial console.
- They almost always have an easy way to do headless and network installations.
- They sometimes have additional security modules, like SELinux, different kernel boot parameters, or even different kernel versions. (Although this is less common nowadays.)
- They’re also missing an audio server (different than a GUI), and usually a print server.
- They can often be GBs lighter, which makes a difference when you’re installing on virtual machines with limited disk space.
- They sometimes use different file systems by default (like Fedora used to).
- They might create different swap setups.
- They usually have very different network defaults. Like, desktop editions usually have a firewall, whereas server editions usually don’t (or it’s not enabled by default).
- Server editions often include terminal tools that desktop editions don’t.
- They’ll sometimes have a different network manager (Ubuntu Server uses systemd-networkd while Ubuntu Desktop uses Network-Manager).
- Server editions almost never come with userland file mounting tools like gvfs.
- Sometimes (like in Fedora) a server edition will come with remote management solutions like Cockpit.
- The home directory skeletons will be vastly different on a server vs a desktop.
That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are plenty more I could find.
Now, since you seem like you might accuse me of it, note that I did not say that a server edition and a desktop edition can’t be swapped back and forth by installing and removing packages and changing a bunch of config. They can. But, it’s not “just” some GUI stuff that makes a desktop edition, and it’s not “just” the lack of a GUI that makes a server edition. They are usually quite different.
Source: I’ve been a professional Linux server administrator for 16 years. But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. Install Ubuntu server, then run
sudo apt install ubuntu-desktopand see if it’s exactly the same as installing Ubuntu Desktop.Son I’ve been an IT professional since before the internet had pictures and have spun up more linux hosts than you’ve had fap sessions.
and see if it’s exactly the same as installing Ubuntu Desktop.
There is no way to convert a Windows Server into a desktop compatible device without recompiling significant portions of the source code, and at that point all you are doing is recapitulating Windows Desktop
There are several ways, though not trivial, to do that with linux, in both directions. I’ve literally done it.
It doesn’t matter what extra packages get bundled with the distro that at a fundamental level all versions of linux are the same thing under the hood
Almost all of selfhosting is editing config files, setting permissions and starting/stopping services.
Setting it up so you can administer a server by desktop is probably as hard as learning how to edit config files from a terminal. Maybe harder.
Yep my thoughts. New selfhosters think the hard part of selfhosting is command line but that’s “kinda” like thinking that the hard part of math is writing numbers on paper. Terminal is just the medium, not the complex part. Navigating filesystem and editing files is easier on the desktop but changing permissions and managing services would be be extremely difficult for a newbie without using the terminal because (almost) every online tutorial uses terminal. OP would have to learn how to translate the terminal command to its desktop counterpart at which point they might as well use the terminal.
OP also has an XY problem. They asked for a system which does not require terminal usage but they should have actually asked for an easy to set up system. People are recommending things like Yunohost though, so it’s fine in the end.
OP also has an XY problem.
Oh god, that… I recently realized that I’ve been fighting that concept with one of my cars for over a year now. Just this week, I finally figured out the right troubleshooting path 😂
I can recommend you Debian, since it’s the “default” for many servers and has a lot of documentation and an extremely big userbase.
For web interfaces, I can recommend you, as you already mentioned, CasaOS and Cockpit.
I used CasaOS in the beginning and liked it, but nowadays, I mostly use Cockpit, where I have the feeling that it integrates the host system more, and allows me to do most of my maintenance (updating, etc.) quite easily.
CasaOS is more aesthetic imo, and allows you to install docker containers graphically, which is better for beginners.
I personally do my docker stuff mostly via CLI (docker compose file) nowadays, because I find it more straightforward, but the configuration CasaOS offers is easier to understand and has nice defaultsThanks, that was really helpful :D
I’ll try CasaOS then, and later maybe I could move to Debian once I get better at the command line!
CasaOS isn’t an OS, it’s just the web interface you install afterwards you have Debian or whatever running
OHHH that’s why I couldn’t find out how to install it. Got it.
For what it’s worth, CasaOS isn’t actually an operating system. It absolutely works as an easy way to install and manage your self-hosted apps if you aren’t comfortable with the command line, but you still need to have a working Linux installation.
Yunohost is kind of similar as far as making things easier, but it operates as a standalone OS, so might be more what you’re looking for.
I ended up installing Debian since Yunohost can’t install and my old laptop doesn’t meet the hardware requirements of TrueNAS Scale
By the way, you can still run the Yunohost installer ontop of your Debian install… If you want to… It’s Debian-based anyway so it doesn’t really matter if you use its own install media or use the script on an existing Debian install. Though I feel like adding: If you’re looking for Docker… Yunohost might not be your best choice. It’s made to take control itself and it doesn’t use containers. Of course you can circumvent that and add Docker containers nonetheless… But that isn’t really the point and you’d end up dealing with the underlying Debian and just making it more complicated.
It is a very good solution if you don’t want to deal with the CLI. But it stops being useful once you want too much customization, or unpackaged apps. At least that’s my experience. But that’s kind of always the case. Simpler and more things automatically and pre-configured, means less customizability (or more effort to actually customize it).
Ah got it. I’ve installed debian since yunohost had issues installing for whatever reason. Weird.
