150$ is rather ambitious for what you are describing as a custom made low power server. Managing to build something… Anything commercial out of new, hell even refurbished parts that has enough horse power to run anything more than a pihole/DNS server at this price point would be a challenge and a half. If you’re going refurbished/2nd hand, you’re likely gonna spend half of that on just shipping the parts to you.

I believe you are vastly underestimating the price of new low end parts and vastly overestimating the capabilities and availability of old micro servers. I’d say something like this would work at a price range of around 300~400$ (and even that’s ambitious imo).

And even then, that’s a NICHE audience you’d be targeting. It would be people who don’t wanna pay subscriptions, but also don’t wanna be bothered to spend a day or 2 figuring out how to set up a simple linux box on an old computer they have. I’m not saying that audience doesn’t exist, it’s just veeeeery niche.

Chimera Linux is actually really nice. Been daily driving it for a little bit, and as long as you don’t have an Nvidia GPU, it should work just fine.

I’ve tried FreeBSD and in my experience, it was just like clunkier, worse documented linux. I specifically remember having issues with wifi drivers not working and drivers as a whole being a huge pain. I’ve also tried setting up OpnSense in a VM (for testing purposes) and that was just as clunky.

I’ve also thought of trying TrueNAS core… But the way I see it, it’s just clunkier TrueNAS scale without proper virtualization and with more limitations.

And those my thoughts on FreeBSD. Clunky.

E: All of that and it’s just licensed under the wrong license… I like the BSD license, I just don’t think it works for an OS.

Chimera Linux. You’d think that a distro using its own bsd-like userspace and dinit instead of systemd is janky and unusable, but it’s been one of the most painless experiences I’ve had.

Genuinely recommend trying it if you don’t have an Nvidia GPU.

Depends on the distribution. And how used you are to windows.

Imo, for the easiest possible experience, choose fedora and use it sorta like desktop android.

I’m biased towards TrueNAS scale, because in my experience, it’s been really rock solid, running on bare metal. It also allows you to setup things like Nextcloud/Tailscale/ a lot more, in 1 click from their “app store”. It’s also got all the virtualization bells and whistles. As for ZFS, again, just like everything else, it’s been rock solid and setting up a ZFS pool is pretty much done for you when you install TN Scale.

As for remote access, I’ve always personally done it via a local Wireguard server and can’t really compare it to tailscare or whatever cloudflare does… Because I’ve never used those.

If you need a GPU just for encoding, go on the 2nd hand market and pick up a used Nvidia RTX 2000/3000 card. Intel Arc could also work, but it’s a bit quirky afaik…

Bash

Generally, no. M$ office has some pretty invasive DRM, so your best bet to running it on linux is to run it on a windows virtual machine

It’s kind of a bad habit of mine… yeah, i got no excuses

Did you just, not read the OP and come straight to this person’s comment to argue with them based off the least charitable interpretation?

Yeah, kinda

it’s a good pick

LMDE isn’t Debian. It’s based on it, but removes a lot of the headaches, found in Debian.

Not only that, installing flatpak is also a thing. PPAs also work differently on debian, compared to ubuntu… And if the beginner has too new of a hardware setup or wants to game at all, Debian is gonna throw them for a loop.

There is a difference between Debian and Debian-based. I wouldn’t recommend Debian itself, because it’s got quite a bit of post-install setup (installing sudo, setting up flatpak, installing network manager, that kind of stuff). Linux mint is one of my go-tos when it comes to new users though…

The best advice… Just use Linux more… It’s the only way to get familiar with it

Debian is a terrible choice for beginners

1. GNOME has an entire extension ecosystem. Look up “gnome extension manager” on flathub.

2. Yes, Linux can be more problematic on some laptops. Especially ones with realtek wifi/Bluetooth or Nvidia/Intel hybrid graphics.

3. Yes, try EndeavorOS.

4. Linux gives you the full power to delete whatever, whenever. You can delete anything and everything you want without needing any workarounds.

5. No. Linux by default gives you root access. It’s a thing you just get. In fact you need it to update most* distros. You don’t need to “root” Linux. Root privileges are a given on most distros.

6. Install the other DE’s package from your distro’s repos, logout and the login interface should have an option to change your DE, the next time you login.

7. It’s… Complicated. TL;DR Wayland is the more modern display server that most distros and desktops are in the process of moving to. I’d suggest using it over X11, wherever possible. As for docker, that doesn’t really matter for desktop use.

Windows 11

I’ve imaged an entire 128GB SSD to my NAS…

Wayland for better or for worse is still in development, it’s actively changing and a lot of developers can’t (or don’t wanna bother) keeping up…