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Linux Server Distro's.. Which One??

JamesTheGreat
By JamesTheGreat
in Servers, NAS, and Home Lab
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I'm looking for a REALLY SIMPLE Linux Server Distro to work as a File Server.  Something lightweight, fast, and not resource heavy...

 

I'm not a linux person myself, but need something with a free license. 

 

Can anyone suggest something...

I remember on one of LTT's video's they say something about which distro they were using, but I can't remember which it is...

Does anyone know what linux distro's LTT is using?

 

 

Thanks

James

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CentOS is my go to.

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System: R9-5950x, ASUS X570-Pro, Nvidia Geforce RTX 2070s. 32GB DDR4 @ 3200mhz.

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On 1/22/2019 at 12:24 PM, King Poet said:

https://www.turnkeylinux.org/ has some pretty simple images that take very little to get going. 

i though that said turkeylinux... like is it linux but with everything saying "you faking sure you wannna do that? i might destroy your system!!!!!"

anyways, ubuntu server is a great starting point, becuse well

a. it's ubuntu, it's hard not to find help with it...

b. you can install samba from the install screen to help speed up the deployment time

c. it's ubuntu, it'll fucken run on anything...

*Insert Witty Signature here*

System Config: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/Tncs9N

 

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10 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

i though that said turkeylinux... like is it linux but with everything saying "you faking sure you wannna do that? i might destroy your system!!!!!"

anyways, ubuntu server is a great starting point, becuse well

a. it's ubuntu, it's hard not to find help with it...

b. you can install samba from the install screen to help speed up the deployment time

c. it's ubuntu, it'll fucken run on anything...

When I first looked at it, I thought It said Turkeylinux too.. lol
Like it was a Thanksgiving Distro or something. lol

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If you've got an hour or two, setting up an Ubuntu server image with SSH access and then setting up an SSH key or two is pretty easy. I've got an old laptop running Ubuntu for a Minecraft server pulling double-duty as an SSH server with an external hard drive attached.

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On 1/22/2019 at 3:22 AM, JamesTheGreat said:

I'm looking for a REALLY SIMPLE Linux Server Distro to work as a File Server.  Something lightweight, fast, and not resource heavy...

 

I'm not a linux person myself, but need something with a free license. 

 

Can anyone suggest something...

I remember on one of LTT's video's they say something about which distro they were using, but I can't remember which it is...

Does anyone know what linux distro's LTT is using?

 

 

Thanks

 James

All you really need for this is a linux installation with vsftpd or ssh. There is no "hard" configurations on what you want to acheive. It really depends how far you want to take it. You could use nextcloud or owncloud. However this would be harder to get up and running without some knowledge at all. FTP or SSH server is like single line §apt get install vsftpd or §apt get install openssh-server

 

This will be the same command for all debian based systems.

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There are a lot of linux distros that are good. Centos, Debian, Ubuntu are a few which are mostly used as a server os. If you want to setup your own you can use ubuntu server with samba since you will find a lot of help, easy to use  and is based on Debian. If you want a ready os you can use openmediavault which is based on Debian too.

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On 1/22/2019 at 3:22 AM, JamesTheGreat said:

I'm looking for a REALLY SIMPLE Linux Server Distro to work as a File Server.  Something lightweight, fast, and not resource heavy...

 

I'm not a linux person myself, but need something with a free license. 

 

Can anyone suggest something...

I remember on one of LTT's video's they say something about which distro they were using, but I can't remember which it is...

Does anyone know what linux distro's LTT is using?

 

 

Thanks

James

I came across a distro called nethserver lately. It's based on CentOS but made to be simple for starters. Wouldn't say it is for everyone. But perhaps it is something for you.

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If you're not dead set on linux, NAS4Free is FreeBSD based and has a Web GUI to manage it. You could have it running with less than 4gb of RAM honestly (you could do less, but for SMB's sake I'd try 2-4gb). I would recommend FreeNAS however there's more to it then plug and play that you need to be aware of.

 

If you are dead set on linux, then Ubuntu Server will happily run SSH + SMB + MDADM under 2gb (you don't even need MDADM if you're going to use hardware raid). There are several hundreds of guides and even youtube videos taking out any guess work. You could literally copy/paste your way through the entire process.

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