Hey, folks I’m moving my main PC to linux soon, and for that I have settled on Mint. However, I also plan to build a homelab pc for the first time to selfhost some services, mainly Jellyfinn, some game servers, and possibly next cloud, but I’m unsure which distro to go with for that.
I have some experience running debian headless (on an orange pi) and I can use ssh and the cli just fine, however, I also want the server pc to (maybe) serve as a moonlight client in my living room, so I was leaning towards something that is not headless, and I am unsure if I should also go with Mint for that or if something else might be more suitable.
Arch for the flexibility. You can install all the software you need on it with ease and no ppa’s
That seems like an unreliable high maintenance choice for a server.
I guess that depends on a server, but all my non-Arm servers are on Arch, and it’s been rock solid so far. (Years, close to a decade.) What I like is that I don’t need to upgrade it (meaning across versions), I just update it here and there, non-regularly. Never had a single issue. Perhaps I’m lucky and asking for trouble. One machine runs root on an encrypted RAID-0, so I’d test my backup strategy. Another one runs root on RAID-1. Another one runs root on USB drive.
I second this, my old server was previously OMV and then Proxmox. But with my replacement server I went Arch after loving my Steam Deck experience. You’ll learn a lot and I feel like the complaints of it constantly breaking aren’t true if you put a little effort before running updates. I mostly use it headless for remote development (LazyVim) and running containers (moved to Podman from Docker), but I also use Niri for the DE when I do need to use a monitor, for example playing Dwarf Fortress.