Andi

Have driven VAG cars for most of my driving life (25 years out of 27) and have always found something that suited my life at the time. I’m currently driving an Arteon Shooting Brake, but that’s no longer made and the iD range is just dull, dull, dull. The Audi EVs are priced so high they’re ridiculous, and the Cupras are just not different enough from the iDs… I’m hoping the Skoda concepts come to fruition, but they’ll most likely be dulled down and not as cool as they look now (the Epiq looks neat)… We shall see. But it may be time to move on.

I might be getting old, but I don’t want a dull car, thanks!

To counter my own “easy to migrate” argument, DietPi includes a backup utility called ‘dietpi-backup’ (genius naming convention, I know!) which you can use to backup your whole system to another drive. And of course restore your whole setup on a clean install.

Also very useful for rollbacks if needed. I have a 2.5in 5400rpm 1TB drive attached to my DietPi server which is just for backups - it backs up every night at 2am and it’s incremental too. I have 5 days of backups and it’s one command and a couple of ‘Enters’ to get it rolling back to an earlier config - really easy and useful when a recent kernel update broke my ethernet adapter (Debian’s fault - not DietPi!).

The biggest advantage for docker in the “home lab” environment is to be able to try out an app, but if you decide you don’t like it, removal is simply deleting the container and the data folder. That’s it. No trace left.

Sadly you can’t say that for installed apps.

But I agree, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Seems DietPi will be right up your street and look after things exactly how you want, simply 😁

Originally it was for the Pi, but can also be installed on x64 PC systems, either UEFI or BIOS, so basically runs on anything. It does run great on a Pi, it’s biggest advantage being that it logs to RAM, which massively saves on SD card wear. It’s also the only current distro which works reliably on the original Pi 1 nowadays (if you still have those hanging around!)

And I get that everyone saying “Docker!” is a bit boring, but there is a reason for it - containerising everything does make it a lot easier to manage and migrate everything to another system or revert back a single component to a different version. And you just backup a config file and your data folder for each container and you can recreate your system so easily. If you install directly, you have to worry about databases, file paths, permissions… but as you said, there’s nothing wrong with just installing stuff. Especially if it’s only a few programs.

I run 26 docker containers. Installing all those on a system would be a mess…

I’ll add my vote as it’s not been mentioned: DietPi - based on Debian (since the majority are recommending that) and has a really easy “one click” menu system to install apps (of which include Jellyfin, Plex). And a built in updater to keep everything up to date. And it’ll install on pretty much anything (SBCs, new PCs, old PCs, VMs).

No need to use docker, it installs everything directly, though it does support it if you want to go down that route.

Or, DietPi with CasaOS which is a web interface and app store for docker installations.

Lastly, Plex have their own guide on what you need to copy to move your Plex data from one system to another: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201370363-move-an-install-to-another-system/

Or perhaps, the pro version for free, due to the sub we’re in? Mobilism

Have to disagree as I’ve tried pretty much all of them. The most popular “tiny10” and “tiny11” by NetDev (not mentioned above) is actually a bit of an arse with stuff broken. Same with the others. You shouldn’t need to skim through a Telegram group to figure out how you create a new user account… (Amolierated, I’m looking at you).

However, the one where it all just works is Ghost Spectre Superlite (Windows 11 version, though I’m sure the 10 version is similar). It is proper clever with its app that allows you to add the features you need and install the updates you want, or not if you prefer. They released a tweak to get CoPilot working too which just worked. And all in a tiny image with neat tweaks plus all the bloat gone. And the only one where my laptop instantly resumes and works perfectly with Modern Sleep.

Even has an extended WinPE boot environment with extra apps for hard drive partitioning, data recovery, etc. Worth a look.

Install as “English (World)” and all adverts and additional software is missed, as it doesn’t know your region, therefore doesn’t know what to serve.

If you need the Windows Store, you can change the region post install, and it’ll remain clean and the store will then populate.