Thread

Start 9?

Start9

miniflux rss, linkwarden bookmarks, bitwarden, syncthing, baikal, ntfy, nostr relay, nostr client, gitea, traefik, maybe home assistant if you want to get crazy.

Start9

Proxmox

StartOS and Bitcoin Knots

Umbrel or Start9. I've got both and I think I prefer Umbrel.

Start9

I HAD both. Now I only have Start9. Prefer it.

I’d be more concerned for remaining drive life time.

I would not recommend laptop for a server. Apple doesn’t target server side. That’s one. Laptop is terrible for internal storage changes. Your drive is old. The chance of its death is high. So, you have to have backup plan. Some or all of the mentioned issues can be resolved or argued with. For example, external drive enclosure can fix drive age issue. Until death of main drive. One can argue that apple is famous for providing new os installation path for its older hardware. You know better your case. I tried running server on Mac 20 years ago. It didn’t stick for me. It was easier to load any Linux on any old PC than running something that is not a core scenario for Apple. You will be better of getting $150-200 mini pc with Linux on it. Best option is get a larger pc from pawn shop for the same money. Load linux like Fedora and cruise on easy mode.

I don’t think loading Linux on your mac is a good idea. It is another rare path that few take.

Why was it your preference?

I assumed that if he's really setting it up as a NAS (implying lots of storage desired) he's probably using external RAID drives. But good point nonetheless.

Photoprism!! btw a lot of these suggestions assume you'll be able to easily access this machine from outside your LAN.

Web server for fun

Linux works great on Intel Mac computers.

I've run Linux on old Intel Macs for a while, it works pretty well. Make sure to install mbpfan, it will take care of thermals for you. It's in most distros repositories already. https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan

security and stability but Umbrel has a better marketplace last time i checked.