What operating system for my usecase?
reddit / selfhosted

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deodornat · 2023-12-27 14:01

I currently have built a pc that i wanted to use as a server for my
game servers and media backup (old photos, videos etc) but i want to
use nextcloud so i can easily access my files outside my network but
that requires a docker. so should i switch over to linux or keep
windows? ive never seriously used linux for any kind of long term
period and have never worked with game servers on linux. Im not sure
what to do at this point...

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Bonsailinse · 2023-12-27 14:19

Check if your game servers support Unix, if not, stay with Windows. If
they do, learn the basics of Unix-based systems, most people would
probably suggest Debian based distributions like Ubuntu to start with.

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AceHighness · 2023-12-27 14:29

I would stick with what I know. Just build it on Windows. Switching to
and learning a whole new OS is going to take a lot of time.

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cdnpenguin · 2023-12-27 18:53

I have been using Linux as a daily driver for over 20 years.  I would
however recommend sticking with what you and those around you know, at
least for now.
The good news is that WSL2 is actually pretty good, and you can run a
lot of services with WSL2.

For anything that does not work with WSL2, you can always install
Linux into a Hyper-V VM.  You may need to enable virtualization
support in your BIOS.  Hth.

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Stickus · 2023-12-27 22:05

For the basics like this, stick with what you know: go with Windows.
It will be familiar and easy to follow along with most game server
tutorials. I would also install VirtualBox and run an Ubuntu VM in it,
just to mess around with and get experience on. Install Docker inside
the VM and mess around with that till you feel comfortable. Only then
would I look at running Nextcloud, as I feel like you're going to want
that running on Linux.

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that_one_wierd_guy · 2023-12-27 22:55

I'm a linux guy but, if windows is what you know and you can get it
done there, then no reason to switch. and from what I've heard, docker
works fine on windows

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HellDuke · 2023-12-27 23:58

Stick with Windows. If you are willing to learn Linux you can use
something like OpenMediaVault. It's not uncommon to have game servers
run on Docker containers these days so if you see that you are setting
up your servers as docker containers then you might as well jump to a
Linux based OS (OpenMediaVault has a frontend webpage for control but
it's really just a Debian OS with some things pre-installed) since you
will probably be using docker compose files anyway.

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KrazyKirby99999 · 2023-12-28 05:09

If your servers support Linux/Docker:

- Debian
- Ubuntu LTS
- AlmaLinux