Currently working on an Arch server for my self hosting needs. I love arch, in my eyes its the perfect platform for self hosting. There is no bloat, making it lightweight and resource efficient. Its also very stable if you go down the lts route and have the time and skills to head off problems before they become catastrophic.

The downsides. For someone who is a semi-noob there is a very steep learning curve. Arch is very well documented but when you hit a problem or a brick wall its very frustrating. My low tolerence for bullshit means I take hours/days long breaks from it. There’s also time demands in the real world so needless to say I’ve been going at it for a few weeks now.

Unraid is very appealing - nice clean interface, out-of-the-box solutions for whatever you want to do, easy NAS management… What’s not to like? If it was fully open-source I would’ve bought into it from the start. At least once a day I think “I’m done. Sign me up unraid”. Its taking an age to set up the Arch server. If I went for unraid I could be self hosting in a matter of hours. Unraid is the antitheses of Arch. Arch is for masochists.

Do you ever look at products like unraid and think “fuck this shit, gimme some of that”? What is your version of this? Have you ever actually done it and regretted it/lived happily ever after?

  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.orgEnglish
    101·
    4 hours ago

    Not close at all.

    OK, I got some missing bells and whistles in my current setup, which is just a poor man’s NAS made of ZFS and samba, plus a nextcloud for convenience.

    But I fell so much in love with ZFS that I would never replace it with unraid. For my next box I am looking forward to use TrueNAS instead.

    • jobbies@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      27·
      4 hours ago

      ZFS is a bit like Arch - its wonderful in theory but in practice it can be bitch to work with. I’ve got it working on Arch but it wasn’t easy, let me tell you.

      • non_burglar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 minutes ago

        What parts are “a bitch” to work with?

        I’m a bit confuses about your approach in general:

        No zfs because it “breaks”, but you use arch as server is? Sounds like you want to tinker and break things to learn, but virtualization is “overkill”?

        I don’t understand what you’re trying to get from your homelab.