I’m looking to turn an old laptop into a home server. What distros make sense to use for that? Use a server dedicated distro like Ubuntu Server or is a regular desktop environment like Mint fine too?

Edit: TL;DR use Debian

  • whaleross@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    22 hours ago

    A desktop environment is only useful if you plan to sit by the server to do stuff and you don’t like the terminal, otherwise it’s just a resource hog.

    Personally I also use Debian on my home server and other distros around the house, but if you are new to Linux and just want to get going you may want to look into Unraid or OpenMediaVault.

    Next steps are learning about containers and docker. It makes everything home server much easier in the long run and both suggestions above do it out of the box.