Good news selfhosted crowd! I pitched the idea of setting up a server, and she is down with the idea!
I want to run Linux and host things like Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Navidrome, maybe Plex (I currently host it off my Mac desktop but would move it to a dedicated server).
I know you can host Plex et al on something like a Raspberry Pi, but I want a bit more power. I want something that can push at least 2-3 4K streams.
I’m considering targeting 12th gen i5 with 16GB DDR4. Maybe 32GB if I can swing it. Is that overkill? I know you want 8th gen Intel for hardware transcoding of either x265/HEVC or AV1 (probably the former as the latter is newer).
There are other projects I’d like to run. I’d like to be able to host my own LLM/AI but I’m not trying to go performance overkill here. This would be my first server.
I am somewhat comfortable using the command line, and I would be remoting into the server via my Macs (I have a desktop and a MacBook). However, Linux can run Windows games via Proton and that’s something I’m interested in for some older titles that aren’t on Xbox (like Deus Ex, which came out in 2000 and should run on integrated graphics). I’m not inexperienced with Linux and have been using it off and on (mostly off unfortunately) for over 30 years. My go-to would be Ubuntu, but I’ve heard great things about KDE lately and I know the Internet is in love with Mint these days. Would the distro really matter all that much as long as I have the required services?
Proxmox is based on Debian the way Ubuntu is, but more highly focused and without departing from main Debian strategies.
Proxmox is a kernel and set of tools for managing virtual machines and containers, in this case LXCs. These are different from docker, they share the kernel with the host but have isolation at namespaces (user id’s, process trees, network views, etc). They boot in seconds because they bypass hardware virtualization like you’d have with a VM.
I’d say gaming is better off as its own project effort. You could do things like GPU pass through and a dedicated VM for gaming, but you would be adding a pretty hefty layer of complication. If you dont need to convert av1 to something else, I’d just go with a 7th+ gen iGPU, and dont worry about it. Mine are 7th-10th gen, I have dozens of TBs of media, and they just chug along without issue handling somewhere between 4 and 6 streams at typical top use, mostly streamed without transcoding anyway. AV1 for the source file, you’ll be transcoding almost everything because most devices dont support native decode anyway, so I don’t personally find it worth it yet.
Just to mention, your Mac (if its an M series) can handle LLMs reasonably. I have an M2 Mac mini that runs some models, but my web interface for accessing those models is hosted on an LXC on one of my proxmox nodes.
It mostly gets used for local audio transcription and summaries, though occasional I’ll let it do other things like autocompletes for code (but not generating code, I don’t consider generated code to be useful).