my plex server is currently on a dedicated win10 box. i’ve been contemplating and prepping (somewhat) to migrating over to a headless debian 12 install.
has anyone ever made the move from a dedicted win10 install to a dedicated linux install and noticed any increases in stability or performance?
every so often if plex when i’m playing media, whatever i’m playing will just STOP… i found that if i ‘rewind’ what i’m watching for a second it continues and all is fine. I sort’ve attribute this to my cable connection but who knows.
I know linux… not nearly as well as i know windows, but i know it…
why do you think it would start hostilities?
back in the day i had an old netgear readynas that ran an old version of debian and that’s where i cut my teeth on plex… it worked really well… was very underpowered when it came to transcoding, but it was very reliable.
win10 works, but every so often pms ‘hiccups’ and i just wonder if running it on linux would be more reliable because… my family is very reliant on my plex system and there’s quite a bit of remote streaming going on, so…
right now, my win10 pms server also functions as a download station for getting movies and then converting them with handbrake. i figure if i moved pms to linux (or freebsd) without any other apps on it, it would quietly chug without any issue or input.,
I built my transcoder PMS using an Intel i7-NUC so I could get the integrated GPU for HW transcoding. I put a minimal install of Ubuntu 22.04 desktop on it along with a few (very few) other apps so I could RDP into the desktop to administer it remotely and it has been chugging along wonderfully.
I have 2 PMS running on TrueNAS core (freebsd) but it has no HW transcoding. I have also found 2 bugs with PMS for freebsd that started with 1.40.0 so I am running 1.32.8 on the TrueNAS boxes and the most current on the linux box.
I helped a friend build a linux PMS box w/ Ubuntu 22.04 and his is running well too. I am a linux noob, but if you are familiar with it I would go that route for PMS. If you have NAS storage already that is a plus. If you are planning to create new NAS storage I recommend TrueNAS Core, it’s rock solid.
Well i can’t speak for anyone else but i prefer windows but not windows 10 that is not what i would use for a server with all the embeded spyware inside it, I have had a windows 7 PMS server running for over 10 years with perfect uptime.
The only time the server was ever offline was due to either a power failure causing a shutdown, Internet outage, or a update requiring a reboot otherwise the server runs 24/7 365 it is very stable.
However i also have synology NAS PMS servers running other content for other people and they haven’t had any stability issues either using there linux based DSM operating system. Only issue i have had was 1 build of PMS few months back or so was causing crashes to the server and i had to roll back to previous version for a while until problem was addressed then i updated again and working fine.
So i guess i’m saying they have both been reliable for me so i don’t think it really matters it’s just whatever you prefer.
Let‘s just agree you should no longer run anything connected to the internet on Windows 7.
While „no more support“ (by Microsoft) can certainly mean there’s no more downtimes due to server updates… it obviously also means the platform hasn’t seen any security fixes in years.
[edit: you didn’t say that… just wanted to make it clear before some somebody else does ]
My ubuntu machine with a 7400t outruns the win10 machine on 7500. Video is more responsive, video transcodes more responsive, sometimes in the past not at all on win10. Ubuntu machines never mysteriously have rebooted and are stuck at the windows hello screen, etc etc on and on.
I dare say that win7 is probably more secure than 10 or 11 just because it doesn’t have all the spyware and bloat… plus, when it’s being used for only one single purpose (pms) that eliminates a lot of the attack surface…
THIS is kinda the experience i’m looking for… although i would use straight debian headless, and at most, installing cockpit, but otherwise that’s it… debian minimal with the ability to ssh into it, install pms and be done. going by way of iGPU (no dGPU), still struggle to believe that a 12th gen intel with quicksync would make a better cpu than a ryzen 7700 or 8700G, so if you have any experience with that i’d greatly appreciate that as well.
currently pms is running on an i9-9900T with win10 IoT Enterprise (with all the ad stuff and bloat ripped out so it’s as lean as win10 can get). I borrowed a ryzen 5 7600 for a bit and that was successful but everyone keeps saying quicksync quicksync quicksync and I just don’t understand how the equivalent intel could compare to the ryzen…
if you ever came around to ti you could try win10 IoT ltsc… doesn’t have all the spyware… well, it has a little, but there are a few scripts available that after running really strip all that gunk out… my base system (win10 IoT ltsc) before installing any additional software gets down to around 60 processes with the debloating scripts. so it works how we would want it to work…
AMD gpu/driver and application support has lagged on linux and by the Plex team. They may or may not be better cpus, I don’t know specific models. But when it comes to gpu-hw-video-acceleration tasks, Intel QSV is much much more widely supported. And generally works with Plex out of the box (or has to me).
I use Ubuntu Desktop Minimal install, with the GUI still but without all the desktop publishing apps. VNC for remote, and VPN+SSH as backup.
There are some gpu related packages in the Desktop install vs the Server GUI-less that can pose some headaches you may have to go search for. I’ve heard of others having to, what it is, I dunno, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, just a heads up.
how are you able to install just a desktop minimal install? are you selecting things during the installation or is there an actual installer that only install the os, desktop, and that’s it? because that’s the one thing about linux these days that REALLY bothers me… it’s getting like windows in that they’re dumping all that crap in the install that i don’t want…
i use libreoffice, but i don’t need it on my server… nor do i need solitare, or any of the other junk they’re forcing upon us… i just want a simple os, plus gui, that’s it…
and yes, i agree that amd support has been lagging, but they’ve finally stepped up a good bit… i posted a question somewhat recently and a dev told me that they’re currently working on incorporating the upstreamed version of ffmpeg into the next release of pms and it has full support of the amd gpu’s, plus a few people have mentioned that you just need to install a package or two for full amd gpu support…
only reason why i’m not gonna use it at this moment with linux is because i have too many people that stream from my server and i don’t want them to have issues because of a driver getting wonky… that’s pretty much where intel really shines.
Note: Our hardware-transcoding system has technical support for many dedicated AMD graphics cards, but we haven’t done official, full testing on those. Support for AMD GPUs is provided “as is” and your mileage may vary. It is recommended that you use Intel Quick Sync Video or a dedicated NVIDIA GPU.
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