Tired of running windows. Looking to install Linux instead. Have a 2011 laptop with 2 external HDs. Any distro you’d recommend over another? Thinking LinuxMint or Lubuntu right now based on limited research. Thanks.
Depending on your usage/environment you may be best off using a server install. Ubuntu server is as good as any other debian based one. More resources for Plex.
Both of your potentials are debian based anyway and effectively the same under the hood.
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Going from a Windows environment to a a server distro is a large step if not familiar with Linux.
PMS runs equally well in either environment.
What is gained by running a server build is the lack of a GUI and resources they take. This gives more CPU cycles to PMS transcoding (when needed)
What is lost by running a server build is the loss of the GUI used to administer PMS on the machine.
I use Fedora Workstation, 16 GB of RAM, i7 3740qm CPU (yes, mobile @ 2.7 Ghz). I run PMS, multiple Virtual Box VMs for debugging different user problems, plus my own normal media ripping & processing. None of the extra activities interfere with PMS streaming / transcoding in any way.
The ultimate questions are:
- What resources does the target computer have computationally.?
- What is the target utlization?
- How many concurrent streams (including potential simultaneous transcodes) are expected?
Having helped others who are new to Linux, I do not recommend a server build for any first-time Linux user.
Start with Workstation. It has the GUI. You can accomplish almost everything you’ll need without opening the command line.
As your skills grow, then create a VM server system and polish your proficiency.
You’ll know when it’s time to step into a server build.
Thanks. Definitely not going to run a non-GUI distro. If that’s what server builds are then I’ll need to look elsewhere.
For server OS, I would stick with versions with long term support. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or CentOS 7. I personally choose Ubuntu server as its packages are more recent. But as already mentioned, make sure you understand Linux quite well before trying to set up a server.
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@housenuts said:
Thanks. Definitely not going to run a non-GUI distro. If that’s what server builds are then I’ll need to look elsewhere.
In that case Lubuntu is about as light as it gets so I’d probably use that and yeah go for 16.04 like @wildkeny suggests.
I Gentoo Live usb but don’t install on handdisk. You then must use the minimal iso and computer skills from 1990 to install or give you a couples of days to read the handbook.
Ubuntu works fine and easy to install.
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This topic should have closed 31.Dec.2017
Closing.
