TL:DR - have you used UmbralOS on a non-umbral device? Is it pretty straightforward? Reliable? Easy to use for a simple media server?
THE TL: SO my mini-pc’s M.2 SSD shit the bed, and I’m essentially forced to rebuild my media server from backups, etc. I keep my actual media on USB external drives, and backup my configs/YAML regularly, so not the end of the world. I’ve put in a new SSD and ready to restart… but as they say, each problem is also an opportunity, and I’m considering switching the structure/interface of the server.
Instead of pure, headless CLI ubuntu server, I previously used CasaOS, as, at the time, I was new to hosting, and other users in my household are absolutely allergic to CLI and pretty much always will be. CasaOS is nice because the Debian CLI is there for me if I need it, but running on top is an “Okay” GUI that has familiar things like “apps” and folders with folder structures. Even though I’m much more experienced than I was, say, a year ago, I still think I’d rather not do “pure” CLI docker compose. I only need a couple, simple services, that are easier for other household members to interact with independently if it has a GUI. If you think there’s a compelling reason I should change my mind on that, tell me why.
CasaOS over the past year ish has started to feel very much like abandonware, however, as they’ve moved to ZimaOS (which is waaay more than we need, I’m not running a RAID or trying to set up 20+self-hosted services…Does anyone have experience with UmbralOS (especially on NON-Umbral hardware, and with USB external HDD storage) It’s for a simple media & file hosting experience via Jellyfin, primarily.
We’re running an ARR stack, Jellyseer & Jellyfin with Nextcloud for photos & documents. My mini pc is a GEEKOM Air12 LITE which is not particularly beefy on specs… though I’m going to add another 8 gb of RAM to it when I upgrade. Any thoughts/advice are so greatly appreciated. Thank you!
No experience with Umbrel or CasaOS. But headless and install your own stuff is often better, your users don’t have to use CLI, just have a startpage for them with links to the apps you have.
I personally use Freedombox, Debian’s own self hosting solution. It does run Home Assistant and Nextcloud in Podman, but doesn’t have a web interface to add other containers. The rest of its apps aren’t in containers. I only use it because it has reasonable defaults and includes stuff like pagekite and letsencrypt.
also you say CLI is better, but you don’t say why at all.
OK, what is “a startpage for them with links” is that a service or do you mean create a webpage? I mean, most of what my non CLI users want to do is move/edit files. Like when you get a russian lang only file, or .exe malware… they just need to delete/move things sometimes. I don’t know how a startpage helps that.