OS for home server

[cfrozer]

Whats a good OS for a home server? I got a desktop with a dualcore on it would like to use it for file storage and some media playback, would windows 8.1 work? (what it came with) if not i could use another free home server os

[kerradeph]

FreeNAS and FreeBSD are pretty good options. They support Samba for sharing files to other Windows computers, NFS for Linux and Mac computers, ZFS for a good file system to store everything in, and Empy/Plex for streaming media. 

[cfrozer]

2 minutes ago, kerradeph said:

FreeNAS and FreeBSD are pretty good options. They support Samba for sharing files to other Windows computers, NFS for Linux and Mac computers, ZFS for a good file system to store everything in, and Empy/Plex for streaming media. 

Great! are they easy to setup/ manage?

[BubblyCharizard]

Freenas has a great user community, and many good guides on setup

[Sauron]

Just now, That-Something_ said:

Great! are they easy to setup/ manage?

FreeNAS is pretty intuitive, FreeBSD definitely is not if you're not familiar with it.

[ProjectBox153]

45 minutes ago, That-Something_ said:

Great! are they easy to setup/ manage?

FreeNAS is what I'd go for. It's very easy to use. 

[panther420]

On 2/15/2018 at 3:20 AM, That-Something_ said:

Whats a good OS for a home server? I got a desktop with a dualcore on it would like to use it for file storage and some media playback, would windows 8.1 work? (what it came with) if not i could use another free home server os

As other people have said - Freenas is excellent. The setup is extremely intuitive, but I will warn you - the more you want to with it, the harder it is to do almost exponentially. Setting up the plugins was surprisingly annoying for me. I kept getting errors and it took me a few hours to get everything fixed.

 

also, keep in mind you want a lot of ram for freenas, specifically due to ZFS using a lot for caching and stuff. So your RAM requirements will scale with the amount of storage you want to have as well as how many jails you’re running. If you have just Plex and a 4TB or less raid array, then you should be just fine with 8gb. Don’t ever go lower than 8gb, you will run into major tranfer speed issues and even 8gb is pushing it just a little.

[digitaldoughnut]

On 2/15/2018 at 9:20 AM, That-Something_ said:

Whats a good OS for a home server? I got a desktop with a dualcore on it would like to use it for file storage and some media playback, would windows 8.1 work? (what it came with) if not i could use another free home server os

if you use freenas you will need roughly 1gb of ram per tb as seen in pauls hardware htpc video

[ProjectBox153]

Just now, digitaldoughnut said:

if you use freenas you will need roughly 1gb of ram per tb as seen in pauls hardware htpc video

That’s excessive. It’s been proven that it’s not necessary unless you’re using really fast networking (from what I’ve heard and experienced). 

[Dat Guy]

Tried OpenBSD?

[Razor Blade]

You can install FreeNAS on a flash drive and mess around with it. As long as you don't start mounting your drives you can just remove the USB stick and go back to your already installed Windows OS. Also learn from someone that made the mistake and do yourself a big favor...use a GOOD quality flash drive! (doesn't have to be expensive I just mean not the free or $1 no name flash drives)