Jaypg

First and foremost, backups. Back up everything and back up often. Immutability can’t do anything for critical hardware failure.

Issues happening on something only running container workloads isn’t common but I think it’s worth the extra little effort to reduce the risk even further. Fedora CoreOS or Flatcar is ideal since its declarative nature makes it easily reproducible. Fedora IOT can get you there too, but it doesn’t use ignition so you’ll be setting the server up manually.

Immutability is good. Declarative configuration is good. Manage cattle, not a pet.

To me, every Windows gripe you just listed is trivial to work around. What I’m saying, perhaps poorly, is why should I have to work around them. Why aren’t the defaults sane and just work? KDE has the most sane defaults to me for a Linux DE that follow written and unwritten industry standards, but generally speaking it’s the exception and not the rule and I’d still prefer using something else. Using Linux as a desktop is irritating. Just a lot of “why is it like that? That’s dumb.” It’s not that it’s just sooooo impossible to use a desktop with a launcher in another position. It’s that I think it’s a stupid decision and have to spend time researching if and how that mistake can be fixed when I shouldn’t have to. It’s ok to stand on the shoulders of giants and do what everybody has been doing and expecting for the last 40+ years.

Why does macOS stick the toolbar along the top? Apple thinks it’s better UX design to have a unified area for that UI element regardless of window position. Makes sense. Passes the sniff test. Gnome sticking the bar on the left edge enhances the user experience and makes the environment easier to use? No, doesn’t pass the sniff test. But I agree, macOS does toolbars different. I would prefer if Windows adopted that design too. But if something deviates from a standard and you have no reasoning to how it improves anything or enhances the UX, hipster design. Different for the sake of being different.

You asked for an example. I’m not going to spend a lot of time thinking of the best example when any example will do. For some, sure it’s more difficult. Like that fake triangle tablet. Is that something you could get used to or learn to live with? Yeah, but why should you spend time learning how to “fix” it when everybody else does it a different and standard way? For a desktop it’s also one of the most important UI elements on screen FYI. The first introduction to a new user shouldn’t be to confuse them for no reason.

But I’ll circle back to it’s just being different for the sake of being different, not because it’s better or easier. Unless you have some point on how it’s somehow better and more intuitive, again, it’s just hipster app development.

Re: KDE, I do use it on the Linux desktop I rarely touch. It’s also used on my Bazzite box for if I ever need desktop mode. The KDE defaults aren’t perfect but they’re the most sane of all the environments I’ve tried, and believe me over the last 22 years I think I’ve probably tried them all at some point. Calling any example I bring up trivial would be fine, but aren’t your gripes with Windows also trivial and something you couldn’t just work around?

Oh, ok. Fair enough. How about the Unity and/or Gnome3 dock as an example? Windows historically: taskbar at the bottom, app menu first icon. MacOS historically: dock at the bottom, app launcher second icon. Unity: Putting our dock where everyone else is? Nonsense. It’s on the left now which isn’t any easier to use. 🤡 Gnome3: App launcher as the first icon? Who’s going to want to ever find and launch an app? Stick that useless icon at the very end. 🤡

It’s just being different for the sake of being different, not because it makes more sense or is any more intuitive. Frankly it’s just hipster app development.

While generally better than Linux as a desktop, Windows does shit the bed a lot. MacOS is the best desktop OS IMO. Sane defaults, nothing visual I really feel like changing, built in apps are all solid and they, and the entire system, all play nicely with one another. It also somewhat does immutability.

It feels like Linux UI and UX developers (generally speaking) are more interested in doing things different for the sake of different rather than using common sense. Personally, I just find it annoying. It’s like that one episode of The Office where they made that triangle-shaped tablet. Linux desktops are that triangle tablet and will unironically preach about how it’s actually the most efficient way to use a tablet, completely ignoring that 97% of computer users have always used a square and will be using a square for decades to come.

For every year Capcom doesn’t make MegaMan Legends 3, an executive needs to be launched out of a trebuchet right into a wall.

Spitting facts. I generally use Linux for any server need, but I’m convinced that people using Linux as a desktop have absolutely nothing to do all day and can spend all their time researching, tweaking, and installing a mishmash of software to make it usable for them.

The best desktop experience I’ve had with Linux is Fedora Kinoite and ironically it cuts against the grain by locking down the base system and making it immutable. Same thing with Bazzite on my TV PC. I can just sit down and achieve my task I needed a computer for without having to waste time screwing around with anything extra.

Traditional RAID isn’t very flexible and is meant/easiest for fresh disks without data. Since you’ve already got data in place, look into something like SnapRAID.

Intel Arc A310. They’re $100, support AV1 and powered completely by the PCIe bus. Combine it with Tdarr and you can compress your media library down to half the size easily while still being able to easily stream to any device you have.

Nearly any SBC you’d buy would beat the pants off it. If you’re shopping by price then check out a Libre Computer Sweet Potato or Renegade, or a Friendly Elec NanoPi R2S+. They’re <=$40 and should be able to run at least the services you mentioned. If you have more budget, there are $100 mini PCs on Amazon that are great for self hosting tons of stuff, like a Bmax B1 Pro.

Something headless for just running containers? Alpine.

It’s small, boots fast, simple, can run from RAM and Docker is available in its software repository.

An HP Elitedesk mini PC would be small enough to tuck away somewhere and have hardware accelerated transcoding support. Jellyfin recently enabled hardware acceleration for the latest Rockchip boards like the Orange Pi 5 so that’s an option too. If you pre-encode your media into a format compatible with everything you want to stream to then it doesn’t matter, just pick any hardware than can get on your network and run Linux.

I’d try to make it every time but it feels grrrreat

I mean, it works though. I’m not masturbating most of the times I eat corn flakes.

Tons already exist. If you’re in the Pacific Northwest then make your donations to https://www.freegeek.org

Deploy code-server and either connect to it with a VPN or open the port needed to connect over the internet.

I’ve used lots of different boards. The Radxa Rock 3c is cheap and has decent performance, but the official OS support is a bit old. The Libre Computer boards are also good and have Armbian support. Libre Computer is releasing a couple more this year too. BananaPi has good options that aren’t expensive, like the BananaPi M5. Friendly Elec has some boards like the NanoPi R2C and R5C that aren’t pricey and have Armbian support. Any one of these boards are fine for a small home lab. Just boot Armbian, install Docker, and add your containers.