Hi, so I want to building a pc for a home server (?) or NAS. I dont really know whats the most appropriate term but what I intend to build is a one pc for my household. currently my requirement is one work ‘pc’ capable of heavy 3d modeling one light work pc. two 4k gaming tvs. (they most likely wont be used at the same time)
my knowledge of technical stuff is bretty basic so please be patient with me.
before, i used my steam deck to stream my work pc using parsec but i thought i just want to jump all in on linux and using vm to use more niche 3d softwares.
my budget is flexible as long as i dont need to use enterprise hardware. also i heard nvidia is not good for linux so i’d like to confirm if that is still the case as im thinking of using 5090 if not, i hope amd releases an equivalent capable card or if any according my quick research suggest.
as for linux, the only distro (?) i ever used is the steam deck one and i love it. im not a programmer or even remotely capable one so i’d like to avoid anything that has to be manually typing commands at terminal but im open to surface level tinkering.
thank you for your time
What exactly are you looking for? “Home Server” and “NAS” are both terms used to describe computers running server software and basically nothing else. Their purpose is to run webservers (the infrastructure behind lemmy.world), game servers (the thing you can connect to in Minecraft, for instance), E-Mail servers (like GMail - not the App on your phone, but what it connects to to get your E-Mails from) and so on. Essentially, they exist just so that other computers can talk to them.
Nearly every server is headless (no mouse and keyboard, no screen). To interface with it, you connect over the internet. You rarely see them run a graphical interface (to save resources) - people use the terminal to administrate them.
Do you want a PC (as in: personal computer) instead? PCs (including laptops and smartphones) run (mostly) graphical applications and end-user applications, such as web browsers, E-Mail clients, office programs, games, etc. In this case, try usual PC hardware. Most will work on Linux (it might be adequate to point out that there are PCs available built specifically to run Linux). General hardware compatibility is pretty good for standard peripherals such as keyboards, mouses, speakers, monitors and cameras (exception for all of them: MacBooks and newer NVIDIA graphics cards). In the Laptop world, many seem to enjoy ThinkPads. Pick a distro (https://distrowiz.pages.dev/, I use Fedora btw), pick a Desktop Environment if you’re allowed to choose (technically you can always install another DE, it might just become messy) (the big ones are all great, the Deck’s desktop mode uses KDE Plasma) and off you go. Tip: Test your distro in a VM.
As for the Terminal: You won’t need it unless you go with Arch. Most of the time. The terminal is just very fast and way more standardized than GUIs. Therefore, Tutorials will use it all of the time. In rare occasions, GUI tools are not available. Good news: Learning the terminal is not as hard as learning to code. Once you feel ready, do try to learn how to use it. It’s a good QOL improvement.
thank you for your explanation, It seems i made a lot of people confused. After a bit of explanation it seems like ‘multiseat’ is the term for what i had in mind.
i’ll check those distros and hopefully i will be able to use linux full time