Selfhosted

Keep in mind the reason why people generally dont run desktop environments on a server is because unessential software uses more resources and increases the chance of a system crash. I would highly reccomend learning how to use a terminal and installing fish (shell) is a great place to start.

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 tried CasaOS for a quick minute. its decent and just has the basics like setting up any disks and then has an app store. its really just a front end for docker and you can manually input the details of any docker containers that arent in the store

ive mostly been running docker stuff on my Synology nas. cant think of the model number now, 218+ i think, but any of the "plus" models will let you run docker. its very similar to Casa, no messing around with command line stuff. ive been self hosting for 10 years now and never touched the command line so i dont know what people are on about here saying you will have trouble

dietpi is another thing ive used on a few devices, mainly small SBCs and raspberry pi's, but i think they might have a version that you can install on anything. its basically just debian, and it has a sort of a wizard that helps set up various things like set up disks and install apps. its headless though so no GUI unless you install one, and the wizard is run from the terminal but youre not having to type any commands at least

I personally use Debian. For your case, you can install lightweight desktop environments such as XFCE.

Honestly from my point of view after reading your post, you don't have a terminal or operating system issue, it feels like you are new to self-hosting and don't know how to start configuring from scratch.

Ideally you want to look for documentations or keep asking for online help. For example, with installing docker, you would want to refer to this: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. Welcome to system admin life, where you spend more time reading/understanding than configuring.

Personally, you can even use AI Chatbot to help you with stuff, just be specific on the system you are on, the goal you are trying to achieve and the problem you are tring to solve.

Which brings me to answer your next point about CasaOS: It exists so that you can skip most of the 'system admin life' step. It skips almost all the setup you would have needed to do on a fresh machine, and just leaves configurations. The downside is usually it eats up more resources than a self-configured install since it comes with redundant features you are unlikely to use.

TLDR; Pre-configured OS such as CasaOS is a solid choice if you just want to set it up and be done with it. If you are here to really learn about system admin stuff, then pick any of the Linux Operating system (Debian-derivatives recommended) with a lightweight DE.

Happy self hosting :v

Maybe you might find home in one of those NAS ootimized distros like Openmediavault, truenas, unraid. If not CasaOS or old good Debian with portainer.

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/

I'm not trying to be unhelpful. My advice would be to steer into the terminal. Bite the bullet. I use arch and alpine for my servers but Fedora would be fine (but SELinux can be a pain with bund mounts)

Probably just go with Fedora with btrfs for snaps. It has lots of support and is a common choice for servers

I was in the same spot about 3 years ago and I started with Unraid. Got me into docker and dipping my toes into command line stuff.

Honestly though you're going to quickly outgrow your old laptops...

If you are mostly hosting files, open media vault has minimal command line, and it's mostly administered through a web admin. It's still fairly complex however, and I definitely recommend reading the manual thoroughly and sticking with easy tasks at first. https://www.openmediavault.org/

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 :)

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.

Umbrel OS

I honestly would use a headless Linux system with docker compose. You can find premade docker compose files.

I went with Truenas Scale and was pleasantly surprised it needed no command line kung fu

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

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

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