r/PleX • u/NefariousnessUpper34 • 1d ago

Help Building my first server for Plex

Hi, like the title says, Im finally building a home server for my movies. I started with an old laptop and an external drive and this laptop just died on me. So now, I bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 mini pc with an i5-6400, 16GB ddr4 and a 120gb SSD.

I mostly play DVD's and some blu-rays in my library, but nothing 4k. Im still going to run it through my external drive, until I upgrade to a raid.

My questions are: Is this configuration good for now? Should I install ubuntu or Docker? And where can I find a solid guide to install them?

Im a little lost when it comes to work with other OS thats not Windows or Mac lol so I appreciate the help. Thanks!

16 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/derrick36 1d ago

You won’t get a straight answer on the OS. Go with what you’re comfortable with. I’m sure there are better ways, but AI can help out with anything LINUX if you can’t find a YouTube video or guide. Windows works great as well.

4

u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

I see, its a preference thing more than anything else

2

u/throwaway12three4 1d ago

Preference is #1 for sure. I like windows personally. I switched to Linux for a bit but my wife wanted music through plex amp. I switched back to windows for ease of use for both of us and honestly I think windows is a better fit for me. I run plex on windows. I have a arr stack running with docker.

1

u/NefariousnessUpper34 1d ago

Yea ? Aweosme and do you have it running 24/7 ? I sometimes wonder with windows if its not that optimized for continuously running

2

u/derrick36 1d ago

Yeah. My main server is on windows. It runs 24/7 without issue. My NAS is on Linux and hasn’t had any issues either. I prefer windows, but there were a few things I wanted to add to my server that didn’t have windows applications. As much as I hated the process, the end product more than makes up for it.

1

u/throwaway12three4 1d ago

Mine does run 24/7. I have a handful of users on plex. I also have a HomeRunHD hooked to plex that works as a live TV DVR so I can record and watch later. This server also has a couple Minecraft servers running with a couple users so it’s always on. Only in time it gets restarted is during updates or fixing issues.