First Home Media Server Questions

[Moman]

I'm building my first home media server to watch my movies and tv shows in my house and (hopefully) allow access to my parents so they can watch as well. I don't see myself using this server for file management but maybe so retro gaming down the line. I want to keep things as simple as possible to start. I'm brand new to the home server world in general so please forgive me if I ask any questions with obvious answers.

1. Is this a good build? Most of the components are from my old gaming pc to save on cost - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XQcG6D

2. I'm planning on following this guide I found - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJvQKLVrmU8 - and I noticed he's using Unbuntu as his OS. I did some research and some are saying it's not the best OS to use. Any suggestions on what I should use?

3. Any tips for beginners I should keep in mind when setting this server up? 

Thanks in advance

[TheDreadPirate]

1. It definitely needs a GPU. That Ryzen CPU will be struggling if you have more than 2 users that need transcodes. If you have an old 10 series Nvidia GPU laying around, that would suffice. I you don't have any spare GPUs, I'd suggest getting an Intel Arc GPU. They are cheap and fantastic for transcoding.

2. I have no idea where you found something that said that Ubuntu isn't the best. There are some vocal Linux purists that don't like some of the snap related things they are doing. But, practically speaking, for the average user Ubuntu is perfectly fine. We generally recommend any of the various Debian or Ubuntu based distros. Mainly because they are so widely used that there is a ton of documentation and we even have a "one liner" install script for jellyfin. But only for Debian/Ubuntu based systems.

3. If this is only ever going to run Jellyfin and nothing else, keep it simple. Skip any virtualization buzzwords tech tubers like to preach in their jellyfin tutorials, like Proxmox or Docker or Unraid. Install your Linux distro of choice, install Jellyfin, done (mostly). Docker and VMs have their place. But too many people have 1 VM or 1 Docker container setups. Lots of extra configuration for no benefit.

If those Seagate hard drives are left over from a, I'm assuming, Windows gaming PC make sure to reformat them to ext4. Assuming you don't have any left over data on them. NTFS does not handle permissions the same way as ext4 and when used on a Linux system it can complicates things.

[Moman]

Thanks for the reply.

1. I don't have a spare GPU at the moment. I guess I'll just have to limit it to 1 user at a time until i can pick one up. probably a used one on ebay.

2. Ubuntu it is

3. Yea keeping it simple is the goal, i'll stick to that advice.

4. The Seagate drives are brand new. Planning on setting them up in the mirrored RAID config for redundancy because I have a lot of data

[copsforfertilizer]

I'm new to Jellyfin and recently got it up and running on my first home server. I watched some of Tech Hut's set up videos but I ended up setting it up without containers or VMs, like thedreadpirate suggests. 

I created a 100 gig partition on my SSD to set up a dual boot for the latest LTS Ubuntu then followed along with this video to install Jellyfin. ZacsTech's YT channel was helpful and they've also got guides on how to set up a dual boot option for Ubuntu if you need it. It was easier for me to get going than when I'd tried Docker desktop and I currently don't have a need for containerization. 

I am pretty sure the external drive I have all my media on that is mounted in Ubuntu is formatted as NTFS and not ext4, which could be the cause of permissions issues I have.