Hi all.
I’m currently running PMS on a quad-core i5 (3.1GHz) with 8GB Ram. The GPU is an AMD Radeon HD7500. It’s a stock DELL computer that I bought a couple of years ago for gaming which is now only serving Plex. OS is Windows 10 Home.
It runs PMS fine as is right now, and my question is wether installing Linux (Ubuntu) on that hardware would make it even better?
The media itself sits on a network share, and won’t be affected at all by the change in PMS OS.
I looked up some forum questions on this, but the questions that I found are 1+ year old, and I’m guessing development hasn’t stopped the last year, so a fresh take on this would be nice.
The reason as for why I’d like to move to Linux, is mainly to free up that computer screen (really can’t run a Windows 10 Home without a screen, well you can, but it’s going to be painful) and run PMS as a deamon thing.
So questions:
- Will I run into any special issues just beacause I’m running in Linux?
- I assume that the hardware is no issue at all?
- Does PMS use the GPU for any kind of processing, and would that work also in Linux? (drivers & linux are always a concern)
And in general: What would be the recommended OS to run PMS on, and why?
Thanks in advance.
I have the same setup. Recycled my son’s old gaming pc as a plex server. It runs Ubuntu 16.04 server as a headless machine. I removed the dvd drive, audio card and graphics card, so it consumes as little power as possible as it runs 24/7. I did do some testing, and power consumption was nearly half that of windows.
I like Ubunbtu as it’s well supported with lots of tutorials and youtube guides online if you are (like me) not really an expert in Linux. (nowhere near). Particularly useful in adding hard drives, samba shares etc.I also like the fact I can do updates as and when I want and they can be done whilst it’s being used without any problems to users. Windows chokes the thing up for ages as it updates as and when windows wants to.
The setup I have purely runs Plex server and the DVR option and sonarr. I have it so I manage all of this via a terminal window in putty for the system and Plex and sonarr are managed by the web interfaces both run. Again I manage them from Windows.
It’s my understanding that the main processor is the one that counts - could be wrong there but I did remove the graphics card so has only the on board graphics. Works very well.
Because the overhead is so much more efficient for a dedicated system, an old PC can be made to do the job very well. I’ve seen it transcoding several concurrent streams and recording stuff from the dvr at the same time.
So my advice is to get shot of windows, install Ubuntu 16.04 server and plex. Shove it under a desk somewhere and forget about it 
Thanks. And you’re right, I’m not a “pro” linux user, so I guess I’ll just remove windows on that computer and go headless. Didn’t seem like you ran into any issues worth mentioning, which to me sounds good.
You do need to give the server a permanent IP in your router and port forward 32400 to it. That’s possibly already set up in your router for the windows version.
I guess for a complete Linux newbie it might be daunting, but if you have a little experience it’s fine. I recommend the guides on htpcguides.com for installing plex and things like Sonarr if you are going to use that. They have always worked for me and the writer answers questions via a forum. Ubuntu install is very straightforward. You don’t need to muck around with ipconfig if you do it in the router.
Adding the hard drives is OK as long as you follow the tutorials, and you need to make a samba shares for the libraries on your hard drive in order to access the files from windows. But you are running them from a nas right? The only issue that comes up is permissions. IE if the plex DVR has recorded something you can delete it via the plex web browser, but not necessarily via windows. Likewise you might not be able to delete watched content via the web interface but can via windows. There is a way round this apparently, but I just try to delete from the web interface and if that doesn’t work delete from windows file manager. No biggie.
Happy to answer any questions.
IT’s working nicely now.
I downloaded Ubuntu Server 16.04.2, it was a quick install, and getting Plex & PlexPy up and running took only 20 minutes. The major challenge was to get Ubuntu to “see” my network drive (SeaGate PersonalCloud, 6TB). I ended up adding it to hosts file in linux, and mounting it like that. I also set my DHCP server to always give teh same IP to both (Linux Server + PersonalCloud drive), to avoid the issues @greekislandlover mentioned.
All in all, very happy. The wife is happy with a second screen too
