My backup PC needs an OS (Free & easy)

Software & Operating Systems
1

I need an OS recommendation to setup an old PC as a weekly backup for my NAS (FreeNAS 9.3 10TB).

It will have a bunch of drives that I want to setup as a JBOD (AUFS / LVM?)
I was going to use a free version of Windows 10, but there might be a better option? The easiest to setup would win.

The PC will simply run a script at startup to backup my NAS then shutdown. I will turn it on before going to bed once a week or after a big update.

Thanks

2

Ubuntu or LinuxMint come to mind.

3 Likes
3

LXLE or some of the other great lightweight distros.

old as in X4 or old as in 5x86?

1 Like
4

Old … does it mean around the Pentium 4? AntiX.

Or if you prefer NAS to NAS then maybe OpenMediaVault (Debian) …

5

You could opt for BSD?

6

Thanks for the replies

The CPU is a Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz

Never used Linux or BSD. So it would need to be a very easy distro.
My FreeNAS setup is near vanilla except for a few cron jobs…

1 Like
7

If you are afraid of tui then test yourself with OpenMediaVault. You have a webui there and if necessary install an X. Underneath is the Debian stable. If the machine is to be made only as a copy, omv should be suitable. Yes, it’s not like FreeNAS but it should be enough for a backup NAS.

https://www.openmediavault.org/

8

mint is windows level of ez, Mint XFCE 32

Some other ones that are light and easy to use
Peppermint OS

MX Linux

LXLE - I would look at this one too

Lubuntu

1 Like
9

many options!
I will try a few of them to see which one is best for me

Thanks!

1 Like
10

Let us know what you use!

I have only tried mint in that list, but have looked into all of them a bit

11

The last LXLE was 16.04.4. With the switch to LXQt, they won’t be making another one for a while, if ever. It won’t be LXDE based and probably not even Ubuntu based. As much as I love LXLE and some of the other options, the choice paralysis of people listing every lightweight distro under the sun probably isn’t too helpful for the OP.

I have a similar machine running Mint Cinnamon edition just fine - any version would be sufficient. It isn’t my personal desktop preference on most of my machines, but I’m a lunatic and people shouldn’t do most things the way I do. I’ve got several old people running it and they rarely ever need assistance, so as mentioned above it is rather intuitive for people coming from Windows. Given the narrow use case, it should be easy to find any help you may need setting it up and having it run problem free.

1 Like