Software For My New Home Server

Summary

Software For My New Home Server May 17, 2026 Earlier this year, I built a new home server and data storage system. From the hardware side of things, this was a whole new experience for me. But the software side also gave me a lot of opportunities to experiment. Synology, TrueNAS, Docker, etc. My previous storage system was Synology, which is appliance-style software. The operating system is set up to be mostly foolproof, and additional software generally requires applications to be packaged specifically for Synology. It is very convenient to have so many decisions made for you, and my original plan was to use TrueNAS as a replacement. Like Synology, TrueNAS has a web-based UI to manage the core services, and an app store to download additional software, all very connect-the-bricks. And if you can’t find an app you want, you can configure anything by using Docker. The more I considered it, though, the more I realized that I didn’t want the limitations of being inside an opinionated system. When everything goes right with appliance-style software, it’s great. But if you veer too far away from the defaults, or if you run into problems, you find yourself fighting against the system instead of working with it. Even Docker, which can make handling multiple services and dependencies both easier and more reliable, adds a level of complexity that can be a drag. Besides, I spend my time professionally running containerized, productionized services, writing config files that are used to generate other config files that eventually run and manage the services. So instead, I decided to go bare metal, and I installed Debian. I have some experience with this from my Mini PC that I was using to complement the Synology. It is very common for software to have a Debian installer. And it isn’t too hard to write or change a systemd config file if you want to install something more obscure or customize things a little. I think you do need a better understanding of how the different parts ...