I tried Ubuntu and found that much easier to install and setup. While I am not an expert on Linux (trying to learn how to use it), I will agree with Duncanyoyo1about the assumed stability of Debian but I will have to say I found Debian very hard to install and setup. I would mainly be using this as an archive for older documents as well as a way to stream videos and music. You can just set up a samba share for Windows, although it’s not quite as secure.Ĭan this be done safely without the need for constant maintenance? I don’t have much computer knowledge and don’t have the time to spend keeping the laptop safe besides the occasional update. If you must have a GUI there is also sshfs, which mounts a SSH directory as a local one and you can then browse it as normal. This can be helpful over crappy connections. rsync can resume a file download if the connection is broken. if you are already in an SSH tunnel you don’t have to worry about data leakage, and 2. There are other programs like Plex, the only other one I have used was Emby, but I didn’t like it as much.įor the documents part I would recommend to just ssh ( Make a good key, I recommend ed25519 ) into the machine, or use rsync over ssh if you need to get a file. Most smart TV’s have one, at least the ones I have used. And pretty much every device since the Xbox 360 has a plex client available, which is great. It works great for Music and Video streaming, but I don’t use it to transcode on the fly. I personally use Plex, but some don’t like it because it isn’t open source. I would avoid any rolling release distributions as they will have frequent updates, and are more likely to break stuff. Of course you could always just use Ubuntu, and install whatever DE you want afterwards. If you want something lightweight, use Lubuntu or Xubuntu, they are lighter on system resources, but still full desktop environments. A lot of people don’t like debian, but their release cycle is pretty long and you don’t have updates every single day.Īnother option would be Ubuntu LTS or one of it’s derivatives.

If you want something that you don’t have to update all the time, take a look at debian stable.

Install plex media server linux mint 17