Inspired by “What’s a good piece of hardware to run a jellyfin server?” I wanted to get the communities thoughts on how to set up my home media server.
Current hardware: Apple Mac mini “Core i7” 2.3 (Late 2012) with 8GB RAM (2x4GB) and 1.0TB Mercury Electra 6G SSD that I upgraded
OS: OMV6 (6.9.14-1 (Shaitan))
Docker containers:
Goal:
Problems:
Questions:
Disclaimer:
Thank you in advance!
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Since you’re a Mac person, I think you should put MacOS on it. iCloud. Time Machine. AirDrop. Bonjour (zeroconf networking). HomeKit. Etc etc. Those are totally worth having and they are all free except iCloud (which is the the best family photo storage/sync/backup platform and totally worth paying for in my opinion).
For software that needs Linux or just runs better on Linux, use Docker. But you will probably need more RAM, because Docker on a Mac runs a Linux Virtual Machine. You’ll essentially be running MacOS and Linux side by side — I personally allocate half my RAM to Docker on my Mac… wether or not 4GB for each OS is enough obviously depends what software you run but it’s likely to be cutting it pretty tight).
You can use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to run a modern version of MacOS on old hardware (Apple sets hardware support cut offs based on the minimum specs that hardware was sold in, and your Mac Mini has a faster CPU than the minimum, you’ve upgraded the storage, and you can upgrade the RAM).
But the biggest reason to go with MacOS is you own a Mac Studio which is far better than your Mac Mini for all the same tasks. One day, you’re going to upgrade your main computer and downgrade the Mac Studio to all the tasks your Mac Mini was doing. And booting Linux on the Mac Studio isn’t likely to be a good option in the foreseeable future. Linux running inside Docker on a MacOS host though? That works wonderfully. Even with x86 software on an ARM Mac.
I run x86 Linux on my Arm Mac in Docker by the way. It’s not as fast as ARM Linux software on the same hardware… but it is way faster than x86 software on 2012 x86 hardware. Which is to say, could be better but totally good enough.