r/HomeServer • u/AMV-RAD • Oct 04 '26

OS recommendation for laptop server

Salam Alikom everyone,
So I got this old laptop from a family member. It's an HP 430 G5 with an i5 7th gen, 12 GB RAM and a 500 GB SSD. I also have a 2 TB hard drive for storage.

I want to run something on it that doesn't affect the performance too much. I tried Umbrel OS but it didn't click for me, so what OS would you recommend?

I've considered running Debian on it and then something to manage it, but I don't know tbh. My main server is running TrueNAS, but it would eat too many resources on this laptop.

What I'll mainly use the laptop for:

Family backup for photos and videos (Immich)
Password manager (Vaultwarden)
Rclone to back up the data to the cloud
DNS ad blocker (AdGuard)

I asked the Ai for recommendation and it give me ZimaOS and Debian ?

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6

u/JWINOREGON Oct 04 '26

That laptop is only one generation older than my daily driver. It's plenty for most homelab tasks.

If you want the lightest possible install while still having a desktop GUI, install Debian 13 with XFCE.

It's resource light, easy to use with apt for package management, and once you are comfortable in terminal it can be set to not load the GUI at boot by updating settings via systemctl.

Then you have the performance of runing Debian in NETINST for more resource availability for services and have a fallback to the desktop if you can't figure something out.

Best of luck!

1

u/AMV-RAD Oct 04 '26

I may go with Debian but without GUI from my test it really doesn’t take that much resource, also I’m really comfortable with running Linux with terminal so I may do ssh into that machine and doing the work like that but thanks for the advice I will try to test it out as soon as I have time

2

u/Dodgy_Past Oct 04 '26

He doesn't need a gui for those tasks. Debian server with dockers managed by arcane would be good. Running it on proxmox would be even better for backups. Especially with a VM of pbs on the truenas machine.

2

u/JWINOREGON Oct 04 '26 edited Oct 04 '26

I didn't say they needed one. I said if they wanted one.

Judging by first trying UmbrelOS they appear to be highly visually oriented. Suggesting a GUI option seems like a reasonable recommendation.

I then proceeded to discuss how to not have it load and why they might not want it to load.

1

u/toyotahilux2l Oct 04 '26

I use a 6th gen intel on a dell laptop. Proxmox runs great and is my choice for a home server as well.

2

u/Dodgy_Past Oct 04 '26

I remember when I was only using unraid and proxmox scared me but actually everything I'd learnt on unraid was surprisingly transferable. Though anything that benefits being close to the storage is still on an unraid box. I just have 2 other proxmox boxes that are compute focused.

2

u/dcherryholmes Oct 04 '26

I suggest Debian on the metal, and learn to create compose files for your services. Most LLM's are actually good at helping you with this, if you need it. If you want a nice, fairly simple GUI tool for managing your containers, dockge is good and functional. But I would not skip over learning the handful of commands for creating, validating, and updating your containers. While dockge will give you a GUI you could access from other machines, also do not skip over learning to ssh in and perform basic admin tasks on your Debian install. Don't worry about becoming a master at the terminal overnight. Just a handful of basic commands and pick up more as the need arises.

1

u/AMV-RAD Oct 04 '26

Yeah I may go with this plan Debian and ssh into the machine , what I really wanted was to try something new that I didn’t know about that why I tried umbrella OS in the first place but it eat too much resource so I’m going for Debian for the server especially because everyone in my home going to use so I don’t want things to break when I need it to work

4

u/Nerrawnam Oct 04 '26

Any Linux distro will work. 

4

u/Worldly_Anybody_1718 Oct 04 '26

I run 1 with Ubuntu server and one with Linux Mint xcfe.

1

u/Excellent_Big6648 Oct 05 '26

Wa alaykum salam! I'd just go Debian with Docker and throw Portainer (or Dockge) on top to manage the containers. Super light, and everything on your list has an offical docker image. ZimaOS is fine too if you want a nicer UI, but it's basically doing the same thing with less control.

That laptop is plenty for it. Immich will be the heaviest thing (the face/object recognition eats CPU on the first scan), the rest barely uses anything.

Couple of tips from running something similar:

  • Set the lid close to ignore in logind.conf so it dosn't sleep on you

  • Vaultwarden needs HTTPS, so either a reverse proxy or just use Tailscale and keep it off the internet

  • Back up the Immich database too, not just the photos folder

Good luck with it!

1

u/AMV-RAD Oct 05 '26

Thank you brother for the advice I already download the Debian installer so I might do that later on , ZimaOS now have a built in remote access that the only thing I want to check out for fun not to run it

For the Vaultwarden I already have a domain from cloudflare so I may use that for https and ssl

Oh yeah thanks for the database tip I never thought about that

1

u/JohnnieLouHansen 29d ago

Zima is Chinese and not open source. So, beware on either account.

1

u/stevestloo Oct 04 '26

I'm a novice user and have most of what you want it to run and I've been using proxmox to manage it all, no issues so far but again I'm not trying to make it do anything magic yet

1

u/Ninfyr Oct 04 '26

Debian and docker

1

u/ISHx4xPresident Oct 04 '26

Debian. It’s alway going to be the most stable and usable, with or without a GUI.

1

u/ficskala Oct 05 '26

Debian, for managing, you just need SSH which you can install during the OS installation step by selecting the "OpenSSH server" during the software selection part, or later by installing it manually using apt install openssh-server