Good server OS for Jellyfin

Debian

As someone who doesn't know as much about the differences, why?

Say debian vs ubuntu
- There's no reason to use Ubuntu for this scenario. Debian will be cleaner, simpler and easier to support long term. Ubuntu complicates things and there are no benefits to compensate that for OP's use case.
- Debian is (rightfully) known for being lightweight and very stable. Particularly with older hardware, while still being quite compatible with newer hardware. Their long-running release cycles tend to not break whenever updates do roll out. Ubuntu is Debian based as well, its focus however is on user friendliness and usability, especially on the GUI front. Ubuntu server is perfectly fine, but it’s heavy handed compared to a minimal Debian installation with just a handful of packages selected purposefully by the user for the task it is intended for. There have also been more vocal complaints about whatever Canonical is trying to do with snaps/snap store.
  
  Most beginners with Linux I would more encourage to try Debian for its stability and speed because it’s a great platform to learn Linux on as well as experiment with whatever goal they have by way of packages and projects available all over the open source side of the web.
- Honestly, I would say because you just have less struggle. I had just a lot more problems when I was using Ubuntu instead of Debian. But I thinks it's mostly personal preference
- I agree w what others have said. Just some personal background: started with Ubuntu (well technically I started with Suse, then then Ubuntu). But I found on the server, Ubuntu required a lot of manual upkeep. Debian was just always worked, never had to think twice about it.

Debian

What's the hardware?
Debian, imho

I love how every answer so far is Debian.

Debian is the correct answer.

Using a debian base (OMV6) with docker. Container is maintained by linuxserver.io
No issues so far beyond myself botching permissions but anyone competent should be able to do it.

Same, but with the jellyfin/jellyfin image. Been solid for me, less dramas than raw on the OS. Two cores and 8GB for the VM (in Proxmox), media on a NAS, metadata on local SSD.

Based on that generic request, you're just going to get everyone's personal favourite server OS here. You'll need to give more details to get something tailored to your needs.

True, but everyone's favorite so far is debian
- As it should be.

Everybody is so quick to suggest Debian (and it's a fine choice), but Alpine is great for such things, as well. It's blazing fast, frequently updated, has most packages you could ever want in a server environment (not that it matters if you're planning on using containers). I've been using Alpine for years as my docker host, and not once have I thought "man, I wish it was debian instead".

frequently updated

Not something I'd want on my server :) Partly joking, their lifecycle makes sense if you stay on the major.minor release. Though I find 2 years security support is a bit short - Debian LTS is usually around 5 years, not an excuse to wait for the last moment to upgrade but I find it more comfortable than just 2 years.

One thing to watch for is that alpine uses musl as it libc, and many programs expect glibc so you might run into obscure bugs. I find it good as base image for OCI images (again there are edge cases), but wouldn't use it for a general purpose server.
- I upgrade as soon as new versions come out, I like living on the edge :) if something goes wrong, there are backups.
  
  As for musl, I haven't mentioned it since OP wants to run containers - and in that case, musl doesn't matter. And for running programs natively, many are available as packages (with any musl incompatibilities already resolved). But yeah, if you venture outside these limits, you can definitely run into issues with musl.
I've been using Debian as my main server OS for a long time, but yeah I've started using Alpine for lightweight hosts for a single app/docker lately. Especially on proxmox with the pve-helper-scripts you can spin up an Alpine container or VM with Docker in a few seconds.

I would like to recommend an Ubuntu Server LTS which is almost as solid as Debian in my opinion but with many useful features like nonfree drivers accessible right away and newer packages.

nonfree drivers accessible right away

Non-free firmware is included in the Debian installer since Bookworm.
I've recently switched from Ubuntu Server LTS to Debian stable because Ubuntu started adding snaps to Server too, and the LTS support was restricted behind machine registration which doesn't smell good to me.

I haven't had to deal with any unusual driver support on Debian, probably because I use Intel CPU+GPU for transcoding not Nvidia.

The only external thing I've installed was adding the official Docker repo to have the latest Docker, docker-compose-plugin, containerd etc. straight from the source.

Debian’s great for this.

I’m also running NextCloud (the official AIO Docker image) on Debian. Great for that too.

Probably Debian or Ubuntu

I tried truenas and was at first enamored but felt quite limited when it came to using docker compose. There are no official ways for using it. Additionally because it uses kubernetes under the hood it's not as easy to go under the hood to make it work, as it requires knowledge of that in addition to docker. There is an unofficial docker compose package but there is almost no documentation that I could find and it seems to be largely unmaintained nowadays.

The other OS are good candidates, though through my research, if you are after reliability, people seem to prefer Debian with its more robust validation of updates.

I'm here mostly because I'm setting up my own homelab and I'm preparing for making use of Alpine Linux, which has no desktop environment which makes it particularly fast to boot. Additionally it is very robust, has decent documentation and allows for quite some customization but requires to learn a bit about how to make it work. With its barebone structure, it is more secure as it has a smaller attack surface and you only install what you need. Perhaps an alternative for you to consider?

Edit: to keep some sanity while needing to manage your homelab, make sure to put some weight on an os you are familiar with. I have juggled for months between OSs to find what does what I want but it has been a long battle of learning everything from scratch every time. Having tried proxmox, truenas, xcpng, and now hopefully settling with Alpine and zfs. Go the more sane way, any of those first three will work just fine.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
LTS	Long Term Support software version
LXC	Linux Containers
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage
VPN	Virtual Private Network

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It doesn't matter what your host os is, if you're using docker. Choose whichever one you like more

Proxmox. I've been using it and deployed jellyfin in a container, they have a bunch of one-click deployments and it's great. Or you can just use a VM to group Docker containers together. Having a beautiful web interface is huge, Plus being able to access that interface from anywhere via WireGuard/Tailscale is great.

If you do choose to go down this route, there is a "no-nag proxmox" script somewhere, and it will disable some warnings and give you deeper customization options. Well worth a look!

I've never used Proxmox, but have a Docker setup on Ubuntu Server with Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Immich, and a bunch of other smaller things. I still don't understand why use Proxmox over Docker. What does it give you that Docker doesn't?
- Proxmox is completely different from Docker. Proxmox is focused on VMs, and to a lesser extent LXC containers. If you think you will have a need to run VMs (for example, a Windows VM for a game server that doesn't support Linux) Proxmox is great for that.
  
  I run Docker on a dedicated VM inside Proxmox, and then I spin up other specialized VMs on the same system when needed. The Docker VM only does Docker and nothing else at all.
- I run proxmox, then an alpine VM which has all my docker containers.
  
  I do this so that I have the flexibility to run more vms if needed
Proxmox isn't an OS. It runs on top of Debian.

Never not going to mention NixOS. :)

You just need to set services.jellyfin.enable = true; in your system configuration and that's it. It's not containers, but it's better than containers.

I haven't had the time to look into NixOS... but damn that's just fucking magical...

Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora should be good (in that order); I'm not very aware on truenas to give an opinion, but it seems it will work just as well from other comments.

I personally use Fedora, and it's been a solid experience too, with the only gripe bring SELinux. I required a fix for SELinux, but it has worked flawlessly since.

However SELinux might make it annoying to work with containers, so you could consider either switching it off, using another distro or using appropriate configurations to work with it correctly.

Why Ubuntu over Fedora?
- No reason other than the fact that you need extra steps to get Jellyfin working in Fedora.
  
  If you have the patience and time, as I mentioned, you can still use Jellyfin in Fedora.

For a home server, I personally prefer Unraid (which is built on top of Slackware). It has a pretty good UI for managing Docker containers, and also supports KVM (built-in) and LXC (via a plugin).

I'm using Debian, with Docker and running Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Navidrome and Wireguard on Containers on my old laptop. So that would be my suggestion.

You could install CasaOS and/or Portainer, on top of Debian if you want an easier way to manage your server and containers.

I would only recommend TrueNAS Scale if you want an easy way to manage a ZFS pool. I wouldn't use it for anything related to containers or logic as it's very inflexible and only supports specific usecases through its weird app system. Debian is my usual choice for basically everything, but it will be fully DIY. OpenMediaVault is a good turnkey option based on Debian that's similar to TrueNAS Scale, except it allows you to run plain Docker and other custom usecases. I also like Proxmox (based on Debian) a lot but it's a bit too advanced if you don't need its hypervisor functionality.

OMV actually removed their portainer implementation, so if you want to run docker you just have to do it like any other distro.
- Oh I didn't realize. I wonder why they would do that? Either way it's not a huge deal - the main problem with TrueNAS Scale is that you actively cannot install Docker onto it because it will conflict with the normal TrueNAS Scale app system. There are technically ways to get Docker working on a TrueNAS Scale system but they're unsupported and likely to break frequently on updates. Debian and OpenMediaVault should behave similarly in terms of getting Docker set up.
- OMV actually removed their portainer implementation
  
  Actually they didn't....You should update your information.
  https://wiki.omv-extras.org/doku.php?id=omv6:docker_in_omv
  Literally a screenshot from their UI:
  
  Edit:

I use Ubuntu with no complaints, but Debian is probably better, like others are saying. I wouldn't use Fedora for this.

I'm running Fedora Server + Cosmos Cloud. Freaking awesome. Fedora Server comes bundled with Cockpit, which makes admin work much easier, and Cosmos Cloud makes Docker very easy, and automates your security.

Debian or Fedora

Debian if you want something easy and stable, Fedora if you want latest updates and are comfortable with occasional SELinux settings, TrueNAS if you don't want to spend any time at all setting up disks

Ubuntu if you want infinite dependency hell and 5 minute boot times

Been running the docker on unraid for years in a HP slimline. Rock solid.

in the end it doesn't realy matter because you plan on running the services in containers. that beeing said, have you thought about arch?

My motto is "Debian for servers, Arch for workstations".

Whatever you're most comfortable with. It's a simple enough ask that you can do it in Ubuntu server or Debian quite easily.

I would recommend at least using docker but you don't have to.

Truenas isn't very forgiving with drive configuration. I really like it but it isn't great for randomly adding drives here and there. Unraid might be a better choice for home usage. I have never had good luck with their built in app stuff but I've also never really tried past it not doing what I want.

I run truenas with a ubuntu server vm and docker some stuff in that. I also run proxmox on another server and a dev server running Ubuntu server that I docker things on.

Definitely run it in a container. It's a great application, but it has several documented security holes. You'll want it to be as restricted as possible, so if a major exploit does come about, it won't do much harm.
- What about running it as a flatpak? Do you think that's restricted enough if it is exposed to the internet?

From your list, I would go with Debian. Fedora is amazing but doesn't have LTS, so you'll need to update it manually quite often. You can use a script for automatic updates, but I rarely had it working smoothly. Ubuntu is just a joke with repository hell. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but grandma or a child for the desktop, because of its simplicity. TrueNAS never tried...🤷

I would also look into Alpine and some Arch-based distros.

And yes, use containers, this will save you time eventually.

The only real requirement you have for the Jellyfin server is ffmpeg... But this thing runs everywhere

I use RHEL/Rocky 8 for all my home server stuff mostly because i like my home server stuff boring and stable.

Since you were considering TrueNAS, maybe consider something like Debian/Ubuntu + CasaOS. That will give you a good base and webui to work with.

It's not going to be a lean as it could be but it should give you enough guard rails and hand holding to get you started. Then you can figure out the rest of your needs from there. If you don't like it you can always wipe it and try again with something else.

I'd stay away from the TrueNAS, Unraid, Proxmox, etc. mostly due to your hardware and that it's your first home server.

They're not bad at all, but a lot of the stuff is abstracted from you and since you're more than likely going to want to tinker with it having a standardized base install with a distro that has a lot of documentation is going to be very helpful.

For anyone considering CasaOS, I suggest you check out Cosmos Cloud. More or less the same thing but with turnkey automated security and VPN.
- That's really neat! Thanks!!

TrueNAS did make it easy for me to manage my home lab, but I’m more of a software engineer than a devops. Debian if you’re comfortable with managing that.

TrueNAS Scale is based on Debian 😁

Has anyone tried NixOS? PerfectMediaServer.com recommends it, and I'm tempted to give it a try at some point.

I went with bodhi.

There's a jellyfin docker container. Get that going and then the underlying OS becomes important

Not seeing anyone suggesting unRAID… it’s perfect for this kind of thing (from experience). VMs, LXC, Docker & flexible storage options.

Has its own App Store built in as well🤷‍♀️

I don't really want to pay for software right now, as this is just my first server.
If one wants the NAS functionality then yeah unRAID is great. If not I think they'd be served as well or better with Ubuntu and docker (ideally with portainer UI)