How I Do Home Servers Now

I currently install Debian (latest stable version) and pick Cinnamon as my desktop environment. Why do I pick Cinnamon? I find it to be the most straight forward desktop environment.

I’ll then get X11RDP up and running since it just works and I’m not a huge fan of VNC due to numerous issues I’ve had with it in the past.

From here, I’ll decide if I want to install Jellyfin on the host machine or have it done in a container environment like Docker. I’ve always chosen the host machine since I tend to get better performance and in the past, trying to get a nvidia card to be used for encoding was a no go in the container version.

Once I have Jellyfin installed and configured, I’ll install and configure QEMU/KVM with Virt-Manager which handles all my virtual machines. Currently, I am running three virtual environments.

My first VM is my Bittorrent setup which handles all of my “linux distos.” I use the XFCE desktop environment to keep it somewhat light. In that environment, I have all my VPN setup as to keep it separate from the host machine. Once logged in, everything auto connects and starts running.

The second VM is a minimal install of Debian with NextCloud, which is used as my bookmark sync server. Since I switch between Windows and Linux often, this is a great way to keep everything tidy. Whichever browser I intend to setup I’ll install a browser extension called FLOCCUS which logs into Nextcloud and can either SAVE my current bookmarks or SYNC AND DOWNLOAD THEM from the server.

As of now, I use my Windows setup as the main bookmarks so when I switch over to Linux on my desktop or laptop, it will pull the bookmarks down from the server and match whatever my Windows setup is. The only downside to this setup is that if I try and bookmark something on Linux, it won’t save and revert.

My final VM is a Debian minimal install with Docker running so I can run Home Assistant that currently serves for a few lights, switches and a TV. I may expand this VM environment by including a few different micro services.

I’m also in the works of setting up a Windows 11 environment for some Java applications that I plan to work on this year at some point.