Late to the party but I decided to pickup a 13th gen ASUS NUC with an i7 over a prebuilt NAS, bought a couple external hard-disk bays setup Proxmox running a headless Debian 12 VM and almost everything runs great however, mistake was using Debian 12 because the Linux kernel is pretty far out of date and does not support the CPU properly.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Open source is certainly in a great position now but there are some things it’s just not doing that I’m frankly too dumb to do myself. For example, there’s no open source answer to appleTV. The closest thing we have is androidTV and it’s just awful.
I would love to see a TV-centric desktop environment you could run on top of any typical Linux distro. Something implementing live tiles like old windows phone had, a web app that you could access with a smartphone and use to control it like a remote, single-task interface rather than a task-juggling interface we have on normal DEs, sigh. I have a vision I cannot possibly create because that would take incredible skill that I just don’t have to make and I can’t just whine that nobody is making it for me.
Meanwhile, all my Apple stuff works together in a way I generally approve of.
I need to transition away from this at some point but there aren’t always open source solutions for this.
As a TV centric distro, there is libreelec https://libreelec.tv/ You can use it to stream media from jellyfin, plex or other streaming platforms with plugins
It runs kodi that you can also use in other distros as a package
Kodi supports hdmi-cec, which allows to use your TV remote to control kodi, the hardware needs to be compatible too though (raspberry pis are compatible) There is also a mobile app, Kore, to control kodi on local network
The UX may not be as slick as androidtv/appletv but it is customizable
I'm planning to switch my Plex setup to Jellyfin on this new platform. I tried it on my NAS and it almost cooked the very meager CPU 😮
Jellyfin is HEAVY when doing trickplay scans. But outside of that, it’s really not that demanding. I’m running on an N100 right now but I’ve run it fine on stuff as weak as a rk3399.
@muusemuuse @essell Maybe this? There seem to be a number of possibilities. Let us know what you find out. #HomeAutomation #Maker #SelfHost
i like TrueNas! and after trying out True Nas on bare metal for a year or two, now I run it as a VM under Proxmox.
so awesome
You're the second person to suggest that approach. I'll check it out before I do setup next week. Thanks!
I've tried TrueNAS, Rockstor, Openfiler (iSCSI), EasyNAS, and a few others and TrueNAS is easily the favorite. Running it alongside Proxmox is ideal if your server is beefy enough.
I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit. Now when anything fails it’s my own damn fault and I can actually fix it. This sounds bad but it’s actually a much better experience. I learn a lot and have fun. I’m the guy who made all those G4 cube retrofit kits on Thingiverse. It’s been a great distraction for me over the years.
On the subject of containers, learn podman. That’s where everybody seems to be migrating to.
Do you have a recommendation on how to start migrating from docker compose to podman pod or podman kube? And do you know about a web ui for podman (similar to dockge or komodo)?
I haven’t learned about kubes yet. I do use and love quadlets though.
Slowly I am getting confused with all these technologies. What is quadlets if I may ask?
quadlets let you create a systemd unit file to start and manage a podman container as easily as a locally installed system service.
Yup, my servers just run bare Debian and ZFS and I have backup scripts that parse the docker compose files for how often to run and keep backups.
I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit.
It sucks, because I really like Synology's ecosystem--but I don't buy vendor lock-in devices. Luckly we have arc that lets you use SynologyOS on bare metal. If you get get it working with your hardware it's badass.
Why they don't sell home server licenses for SynologyOS is beyond my understanding. It's a really nice little OS and is specifically designed for NAS.
Thank you, I'll add podman to the list of things to checkout. Feels good to know I'll get to set this up however I want
There's also Incus, but if you'll be using your TrueNAS box to host the containers, I suggest you stick to Docker as it's the default. If you're building a second container box, Proxmox, Docker, Podman, and Incus are your best bets. Choose what fits your expertise and needs best.
You have plenty of options. I use Unraid because I bought it before it became a subscription. But I have a friend running Fedora server with Cockpit and running everything from docker containers. The options are endless. ProxMox is a great choice.
When my QNAP finally died on me, I decided to build a DIY NAS and did consider some of the NAS OSes, but I ultimately decided that I really just wanted a regular Linux server. I always find the built-in app stores limiting and end up manually running Docker commands anyways so I don't feel like I ever take advantage of the OS features.
I just have an Arch box and several docker-compose files for my various self-hosting needs, and it's all stored on top of a ZFS RaidZ-1. The ZFS array does monthly scrubs and sends me an email with the results. Sometimes keeping it simple is the best option, but YMMV.
I like Unraid because it's essentially "just Linux" but with a nice web UI. It's got a great UI for Docker, VMs (KVM) and Linux containers (LXC).
Just got unraid up and running for the first time today. There’s a bit of a learning curve coming from TrueNAS Scale but it supports my use case: throwing whatever spinning rust I have into one big array. Seems to work alright, hardware could use additional cooling so I’ve shut it off until a new heatsink arrives.
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My NASs are purely NAS, I prefer a Debian server for... Pretty much everything. But my storage only does storage, I keep those separate (even for an old PC acting as a NAS).
No matter what goes down, I can bring it back up, even with a hardware failure.
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When you end up having a mini homelab look into komo.do for container orchestration over the overkill options like kubernetes or portainer
anything worth doing is worth overdoing
I prefer dockge for putting all of my compositions in one place.
And being able to manage multiple hosts in one UI is the absolute tits. There are a few features I miss from portainer but none strong enough to pull me back. And no bs SaaS licensing and costs...
Portainer is way too bloated for personal use. I liked it initially, but the licensing shit was, well, shit, and the way it managed compose files was garbage. Dockge is way better for my use case, since it works alongside Docker, instead of fucking off to do its own thing.
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Consider that a new power efficient CPU may be cheaper by consuming less electricity over a few years!
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Expect to be ostracised here but if your drives are "junk" (some have SMR), I got better parity performance with Windows Storage Spaces (WSS) than with Unraid. Recoverability and compatibility with old junk hardware was very good too, whereas the bits I had lying around gave me Linux driver conflicts. Trying to install ZFS on Linux gave me a headache, and I then realised I couldn't expand the array easily when I found other cheap crappy drives to add. WSS doesn't care, it just keeps trucking.
As for a licence, the old "upgrade from the windows 7 enterprise key that got leaked" trick did it for me. Never paid for it.
I found that I needed to spend more on components with better driver support to have a working NAS on Linux. Windows isn't open source, but for me it was the cheapest total cost option, and you can still run your containers in it.
I reckon maybe performance is worse on write for WSS? I paid for a PrimoCache licence to fix that though, and now my SSD gets used for initial writes and slowly spools over to the array as the array is able to calculate parity and write with my 10 year old CPU.
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