antiX as a homeserver?

[Member nomad101]

Hello

I asked this question over at MX Linux forum, but I think it’s more useful I ask it here after some advice.

I have QNAP NAS (TS-251+ with hdmi output, 2gb DDR3L-1333 ram, celeron 2ghz quad core cpu) – and hate its bloated slow operations and plan to replace its OS, to use as a home server/LAN only. I wouldn’t be using this for any heavy lifting; more like samba sharing, syncthing, duplicati, data partition disk encryption, (maybe nextcloud).

While I have experience of messing about with linux and I’m ok with cli, it would be nice to use some type GUI to manage the nas box. I first thought of installing debian with xfce. But why not antiX? Is this a good idea? Any cons that you could think of, problems I may run into?

Thanks for any advice

[Anonymous]

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duplicati (C#, mono) is bloaty, may be “slow” on another O/S regardless. Are you already using nextcloud? Many of its pluggable applications are (according to ongoing nextcloud bugtracker+forum posts) woefully slow. It might be useful to skimread those (bugtracker+forum) or search “QNAP” to maybe find feedback from similar users.

> debian with xfce. But why not antiX? Is this a good idea?

A debian kernel configuration might be (i don’t know) better suited to server workloads. Also investigate whether any of your intended “services” applications expect//require systemd.

.
xref: http://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=63684
and

Anyone here using MX Linux as a server?

Stevo:
The MX kernel is more optimized for desktop use than heavy server use than the
standard Debian kernel, with the kernel frequency bumped from 250 to 1000 Hz,
so that might be a consideration. IDK what setting the antiX kernels use.

anticapitalista:
antiX also uses 1000 Hz.

oops:
For a server usage, 250Hz is better for this kernel module parameter.

[Forum Admin Dave]

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As it is likely an arm based system antiX will not run on it anyway.
Debian runs on a nas fine (I have a dlink setup with debian) but you will likely find to run anything gui will be slow. (my dlink only has 512mb of ram). However it is possible to run a vnc service over ssh for this task. Samba, webserver, Owncloud all seem to run fine. In fact the first year of the antiX repo’s existence was piloted on one of these hacked dlinks. If you are looking for an high performance nas, it will most likely become a computer. Fanless computers seem to make good “high performance” nas systems. You can probably find a cheap one with decent ram/cpu but with 2 network cards. Then you can attach the nas directly with the one network card with a minimal debian install with nfs-kernel-server+raid, mount the kernel server share on the fanless computer and use the fanless computer for all the heavy duty fancy network tasks you are looking for.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member dknestaut]

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Howdy,

I can’t speak for your hardware, but I do have antiX installed on a server in my basement. It’s an old PIII with half a gig of RAM. I’m not doing anything terribly exciting with it. It’s an SSH/SFTP server, and though I haven’t got anything like Duplicati or Syncthing on it, I do have my own backup script and versioning with rsync as the backbone, and it all works fine for my particular needs. Your NAS box sounds like it’s got a lot more going for it than my old Presario.

The only downside I can imagine is the GUI. I’m not sure what you would do for that except set up a VNC server to manage it. Mine is a headless box managed through SSH, which I would definitely recommend.

As for Nextcloud, I tried it once last year, and that lasted less than a week. I found it to be terribly slow and full of bugs.

Best of luck to you.

[Member catfood]

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Probably useless to speak on this:

I know nothing of servers sorry. Have been running antiX19.2 core sid for about 6 months now. I personally broke my Xserver, but as a basically headless online typewriter, sid is not breaking me, so odds are stable is les likely to break you. As above, do you/your server need systemd? That would be a difference with deb10 v. antiX. But, currently running a headless antiX server to nothing for a while, and not breaking it in unstable even.

Howdy Jessie.

[Member nomad101]

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Thanks for the input. Actually, the systemd is a good point and I need to investigate further.
I’m being lazy wanting a gui. I’ve used a headless debian server before and the experience was ok. When you don’t use cmd line that much I find myself forgetting even simple commands. Though I think using a headless debian OS seems the sensible choice.

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