This is old hardware. It's a dual-Xeon Dell Precision 490. The Dell support page says warranty coverage began on July 10, 2007, so it's no spring chicken. It has some Nvidia video card that's old, but newer than the computer, but I use Plex to stream to a Roku or XBox, so the video card is kind of a moot point. Also, I live alone, so I don't have to worry about anyone rebooting the computer on me (aside from hardware and power failures). I'd really like to build something quieter and more efficient for a Plex server, but that's a pretty low relative priority. I've used Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE in the past. They were all good. I kind of wanted to try something new, but right now I'm leaning toward Mint. On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 7:56 PM Joshua Stone <joshua.gage.stone@gmail.com> wrote:

If you're using Intel or AMD graphics, then I highly recommend trying out Fedora. It gets the newest kernel and Mesa versions during a release's life cycle, and it typically stays close to upstream. Fedora (Workstation) also isn't rolling release, so you can expect your system to not have any breaking changes from an update which is an important quality in a server. As far as I know, Manjaro having a rolling release model doesn't make this stability guarantee.

Plex also seems to have official builds for Fedora, which can be configured with this guide here:

http://bendavis.me/2015/03/29/setup-plex-media-server-on-fedora/

Some of the steps could be simplified like this:

sudo dnf install https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.13.5.5291-6fa5e50a8/plexmedias... sudo systemctl enable --now plexmediaserver.service

Fedora is also nice if you want to be experiment with some of the latest in Linux desktop technologies. It typically releases with the latest stable Gnome version, and includes new features like Wayland, Flatpak, and Pipewire.

-Josh

On Sun, 2018-08-05 at 16:31 -0400, Richard Klein wrote:

I'm having trouble deciding which distro to install on my new SSD.

It's the only desktop computer in the house, so it's used for web, email, etc, plus it's a Plex server.

DistroWatch.com shows Manjaro being really popular right now, but I've never heard of it. It's based on Arch, which I've heard of, but never tried. I see that Arch uses Pacman for a package manager. I'm used to APT; I'm not sure if I'd like Pacman.

So anyway, I thought I'd ask for suggestions.

-- Rich

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Richard> This is old hardware.  It's a dual-Xeon Dell Precision 490.  Richard> The Dell support page says warranty coverage began on July Richard> 10, 2007, so it's no spring chicken.  It has some Nvidia Richard> video card that's old, but newer than the computer, but I use Richard> Plex to stream to a Roku or XBox, so the video card is kind Richard> of a moot point.  Also, I live alone, so I don't have to Richard> worry about anyone rebooting the computer on me (aside from Richard> hardware and power failures).  I'd really like to build Richard> something quieter and more efficient for a Plex server, but Richard> that's a pretty low relative priority. Richard> I've used Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE in the past.  Richard> They were all good.  I kind of wanted to try something new, Richard> but right now I'm leaning toward Mint. So try Fedora for a while and see how you like it... it's not my personal favorite, but I'm also not happy with systemd either, but all the distros are going that way. I can understand the advantages... but the interface is done by the same guys who did the Sun/Oracle Virtual hosts tools, and the linux 'virsh' tools. Basically high on crack and their own world view and not actually thinking of the common man. But I'll stop there... but I will say it should be easy enough to fire up VirtManager and to try out a couple of distros before you actually commit. John

VirtualBox gave me the following error: VT-x is disabled in the BIOS for all CPU modes (VERR_VMX_MSR_ALL_VMX_DISABLED). Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005) Component: ConsoleWrap Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed} I could mess around with BIOS settings, but not tonight. On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 11:19 PM Richard Klein <rich@richardklein.org> wrote:

I'm not sure VMs are a good solution on my hardware. I can't enable Hyper-V in Windows because the processors don't support SLAT. I'll give it a shot with VirtualBox, though.

On Sun, Aug 5, 2018 at 10:27 PM John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org> wrote:

...

Richard> This is old hardware. It's a dual-Xeon Dell Precision 490. Richard> The Dell support page says warranty coverage began on July Richard> 10, 2007, so it's no spring chicken. It has some Nvidia Richard> video card that's old, but newer than the computer, but I use Richard> Plex to stream to a Roku or XBox, so the video card is kind Richard> of a moot point. Also, I live alone, so I don't have to Richard> worry about anyone rebooting the computer on me (aside from Richard> hardware and power failures). I'd really like to build Richard> something quieter and more efficient for a Plex server, but Richard> that's a pretty low relative priority.

Richard> I've used Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE in the past. Richard> They were all good. I kind of wanted to try something new, Richard> but right now I'm leaning toward Mint.

So try Fedora for a while and see how you like it... it's not my personal favorite, but I'm also not happy with systemd either, but all the distros are going that way. I can understand the advantages... but the interface is done by the same guys who did the Sun/Oracle Virtual hosts tools, and the linux 'virsh' tools. Basically high on crack and their own world view and not actually thinking of the common man.

But I'll stop there...

but I will say it should be easy enough to fire up VirtManager and to try out a couple of distros before you actually commit.

John

I ended up just installing Mint with xfce on the SSD. I didn't stay up to play with it. It didn't boot as quickly as I expected, but it shuts down instantaneously. -- Rich On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 1:03 PM Steven Greenberg <steve@ssgreenberg.name> wrote:

I us an old version of VMWare and Kubuntu.

I managed to get myself paying for VMWare, but I think I could have got it for free.

/Steve

-- Steven Greenberg Email: steve@ssgreenberg.name 251 Holland Rd. Phone: (774)241-0095 Fiskdale, Massachusetts 01518-1231 Web: www.ssgreenberg.name Other Email: s.greenberg@ieee.org ssg@alum.mit.edu