If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.

You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.

I ended up installing Debian since Yunohost can’t install and my old laptop doesn’t meet the hardware requirements of TrueNAS Scale

Generally, Linux Servers are best administered from a command line. At least in the beginning to set everything up. In turn they are faster on lower hardware as they dont even have a graphical desktop at all so need less resources. You could of course install a windows server OS. They can be fully administered through Remote Desktop and a GUI.

There are multiple projects to make self hosting more accessible (like casaOS). They automate many steps of the setup and then offer you a webUI for further steps. Maybe have a look here https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#self-hosting-solutions

Almost all of selfhosting is editing config files, setting permissions and starting/stopping services.

Setting it up so you can administer a server by desktop is probably as hard as learning how to edit config files from a terminal. Maybe harder.

YUNOHost iso is basically just Debian, but the one-click-install for various self-hosted things is it’s primary purpose. All done through web interface.

I can recommend you Debian, since it’s the “default” for many servers and has a lot of documentation and an extremely big userbase.

For web interfaces, I can recommend you, as you already mentioned, CasaOS and Cockpit.

I used CasaOS in the beginning and liked it, but nowadays, I mostly use Cockpit, where I have the feeling that it integrates the host system more, and allows me to do most of my maintenance (updating, etc.) quite easily.

CasaOS is more aesthetic imo, and allows you to install docker containers graphically, which is better for beginners.
I personally do my docker stuff mostly via CLI (docker compose file) nowadays, because I find it more straightforward, but the configuration CasaOS offers is easier to understand and has nice defaults

don’t go with server variants of the OS. they are intended for boxes that work without display and keyboard, which you have. instead, install any normal distro you’re familiar with. it’s infinitely easier to fix something with the full GUI at your disposal.

this is just your first install, you will iterate, and through that process you’ll get better and leaner, in terms of underlying OS. think of it as training wheels on a bike, you’ll pull them off eventually.

wired connection only, leave wireless turned off, and assign it a static IP address.

don’t do containerS, do one container first. figure out where you’re gonna store the compose files, where it will store data, how you will back that data up, etc. then add another. does it fit into your setup? do you need to modify something? rinse. repeat.

casaOS, aside from it’s murky background (some chinese startup or sumsuch, forgot?) doesn’t provide that path forward nor allows you to learn something, too much hand holding.

good luck.

YUNOhost is designed for this. You can do almost everything graphically via the webadmin. Mine has been running for a couple of years and I’m very happy with it. I have email, XMPP (both of which were installed out of the box), a website, file sharing and a few other things. There are a tonne of apps available, including Fediverse instances, Nextcloud. It’s a very cool thing to have available for making self-hosting more accessible.

I would recommend trying out Cockpit (Github) and Portainer (Github).
Cockpit gives you a WebUI for Linux and Portainer gives you a WebUI for Docker.
Personally I usually run Debian Stable for servers, but choice of distro matters little if you run stuff as Docker containers.

You can install some Linux distro and then install a docker management web UI like coolify. Requires little terminal knowledge. Though you should learn the terminal.

Try the Fedora Server distro, afaik it should come with Cockpit installed: https://fedoraproject.org/server/

Not that I’m using them, but what about these two?

https://www.truenas.com/truenas-scale/

https://www.proxmox.com/en/

Hey :) I’m not giving you any recommendations but want to give you my personal experience !

5 years ago I had absolutely no clue about Linux/CLI/networking/docker… You name it ! And I also wanted to repurposed and old laptop as a server.

The first distro I installed on my server was Debian ! Why? Because I remembered my brother said something along the line: “Every server infrastructure is run by Debian or a Debian derivative”. So this sounded like the perfect thing to install as a server distro :) !

5 years later I’m still running Debian on this old laptop and it’s going strong ! Never did it failed me except if I did something wrong over the CLI !

As you guessed it, you will need some degree of proficiency on the command line specially if you install your distro without a graphical user interface, which I would recommend… Yes, the CLI isn’t easy to beginning with and you will do some mistakes that will need a full reinstall of your system… But before you learn to move, you learn to stay up right on your legs and this involves a lot a failing !!

It’s not mandatory, you can install a lightweight GUI and take your time. There are a lot of application with good UI which will help you out ! However, not once did I regret to take the harder route and learned so many things along the way ! After this amount of time in the CLI, I can say I’m getting quite good In navigating my system, keeping it healthy and alive :p !

Okay, If it’s a matter of time I get it ! We only have 24h a day and most of this time is already spend at work/school, family time, friends, sleep, eat ! If you’re lucky enough to have 2 hours to spare to tinker arround, a UI is a good idea to keep a healthy balance between all your personal activities ! But keep in mind, both are thorny and have their fair share of issues and debug time.

Last words, have fun with your system :)

Ubuntu. Many will disagree but, Debian flavors are a way smoother experience from the start and Ubuntu has a ton of community support. You’ll rarely find an issue no one found and solved before you.

Just from the handful of OSs I’ve tried, I’d suggest Ubuntu desktop again.

As for docker, I’d say to get docker and docker compose setup. Once you’re running in docker compose, adding machines is often as simple as editing some markup in a text editor.

But my final suggestion is to crawl before you walk before you run. Start slow in the terminal. Instead of using your file explorer, navigate directories using the terminal and then open the directory you need into the file explorer using the terminal.

Want a new file? Use touch. Want a new directory? Use mkdir. Eventually, it’ll become annoying to open a file from your explorer when you could just open it from the terminal. Then, you’ll get annoyed with text editors and want to reduce your context switches by using vim.

Also, --help is your best friend when trying to figure out commands. You got this! Feel free to send me a message if you wanna chat and have any questions when you’re ready to start dipping your toes. I’m far from an expert, but I’ve made some progress of my own and eventually we might learn a thing or two together.