Good news selfhosted crowd! I pitched the idea of setting up a server, and she is down with the idea!
I want to run Linux and host things like Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Navidrome, maybe Plex (I currently host it off my Mac desktop but would move it to a dedicated server).
I know you can host Plex et al on something like a Raspberry Pi, but I want a bit more power. I want something that can push at least 2-3 4K streams.
I’m considering targeting 12th gen i5 with 16GB DDR4. Maybe 32GB if I can swing it. Is that overkill? I know you want 8th gen Intel for hardware transcoding of either x265/HEVC or AV1 (probably the former as the latter is newer).
There are other projects I’d like to run. I’d like to be able to host my own LLM/AI but I’m not trying to go performance overkill here. This would be my first server.
I am somewhat comfortable using the command line, and I would be remoting into the server via my Macs (I have a desktop and a MacBook). However, Linux can run Windows games via Proton and that’s something I’m interested in for some older titles that aren’t on Xbox (like Deus Ex, which came out in 2000 and should run on integrated graphics). I’m not inexperienced with Linux and have been using it off and on (mostly off unfortunately) for over 30 years. My go-to would be Ubuntu, but I’ve heard great things about KDE lately and I know the Internet is in love with Mint these days. Would the distro really matter all that much as long as I have the required services?
It isn’t nearly as much fun a building a dedicated server, (or what I like to do – repurpose old junk) but the services you mentioned will run just fine on a decent desktop or laptop, especially if you aren’t doing some hungry task while they are running. -1 for Plex. +1 for Jellyfin. You can run them all on your LAN and access them around the house by the machine’s LAN IP and the services’ port number. You can do the same thing if you have tailscale on your phone or other remote computer, just use the tailscale IP and the service’s port. You can use Nginx Proxy Manager to send your services through a cloudflared tunnel to a hostname you buy, and keep access limited to just yourself and a select few (FYI I hear Cloudflared doesn’t like a lot of video streaming, so don’t give access to too many folks).
Jellyfin will run on a windows machine without screwing with docker, and will host your music too, though the UI isn’t great.
You can use a simple fileserver on windows to host other stuff like pics.
Just start somewhere and you’ll be neck-deep before you know it. You can use