I'm currently using an older i5 PC with Windows 10 as my Kodi server, along with several USB 3.0 hard drive enclosures. I have a shared folder from my work PC (running Windows 11) accessible to Kodi on the same local network. The usual routine is to power on the enclosures and the PC after lunch, which allows my drives to load automatically. I also run tinyMediaManager sometimes for scraping videos. I usually shut everything down by midnight. However, since Windows 10 will soon stop receiving updates, and my PC can't handle Windows 11, I'm looking for a suitable Linux distro that can replicate this setup. Any recommendations?
3 Answers
I’m currently testing AnduinOS on a virtual machine to see how it handles the setup. I’d like to confirm: when I power on the PC and enclosures, will it automatically mount the drives with their partition IDs? And when I shut it down, does it unmount them as well? Also, do I need to tweak fstab manually, and is there a user-friendly GUI available to manage drive mounting and update the OS automatically in the background?
You can pretty much use any Linux distro for this. Kodi runs well on Linux, although I haven't specifically tried the server side myself. I typically just stream content from my network-attached Raspberry Pi, which has 2 4TB drives attached.
Almost any Linux distribution can be set up to share files using NFS or Samba, so you have plenty of options depending on your preference for the user interface and package management.
Yes, AnduinOS is Ubuntu-based, so you might want to check the Disks utility. You can label your disks there! For updates, it seems you can use `do_anduinos_upgrade`, and regular updates follow the standard `apt` commands, which shouldn't be too often.