I put antiX on a 2 Gb HP 1 x core Atom a little while ago. It's used for notetaking at meetings with LibreOffice, internet browsing through wifi. Not particularly heavy usage but it runs suprisingly well. As your hardware is a bit restricted, perhaps try that. Edit: spelling
I think I had a look at most of them except Umbrel. Bit of a mixed bag for me and none of them struck me as outstanding. On paper I fancied Runtipi but I struggled to get that up and running even with Debian 11. Liked the inbuilt proxy servers but some of the apps I tried fell over so there was that. Some of them seemed a bit of a walled garden, for instance cosmos cloud provides constellation vpn, free for now but intends to charge for it later. Having commited you might find in future that transferring your containers might be difficult because of the way that they are created to work with the specific application. I decided docker and portainer was simpler for me. On a similar journey to create NAS looked at Proxmox,Truenas Scale and OMV. I'm coming to the conclusion that they're nice but I don't need the level of sophistication they provide. The GUI are nice but I could build on Debian or Ubuntu for my needs, mostly containers and the odd VM.
Mate. Stick with Windows or MacOS. I don't think Linux is for you.
I've seen this type of question elsewhere. Why is it an issue?
Standardisation? Corporate Linux? Just like the big boys? Big fish eat little fish.
Careful what you ask for . .
That does seem to be a good fit, doesn't it? I'll give it a go.
Firmware is up to date, so maybe going forward its not an issue given the age of the laptop.
Thanks for the reply, all the best.
A lot of information is scattered about and it is difficult to find a solution that fits your situation. So you'll have to filter a bit. There are loads of youtube tutorials out there and some of them are well supported by documentation, some are not. Be patient. My setup is basically a Jellyfin docker server with local storage so its easy for Jellyfin to see the files. Jellyfin is installed on Linux after installing docker. Jellyfin apps are installed on the devices I want to use to connect to Jellyfin. My router has Wireguard so I can connect to the router as a Wireguard VPN to listen to Jellyfin content. Thats it. My Jellyfin server is a 2 core i3-6006U laptop with a broken screen I had lying around. These days I think you'll probarbly want to run an 8th - 9th gen Intel processor to support the latest features including GSync, but you don't have to, try it on what you have. Once you have some hardware, look up how to install Linux, get a well known one like Ubuntu to begin with. Put some files in a directory , called say music for testing. Look up how to install Docker, then do that. Lookup how to install Jellyfin in docker. I'd use a .yml because you can change parameters easily and try again. Once you have jellyfin running go to the web interface and tell it where the music directory is so it can scann the files. All this occurs on your home network Install a Jellyfin app on your phone, connect to the server, play music locally. If you want to access away from home use some form of Wireguard VPN but you probarbly have enough to be getting on with. for now.
Edit: Forgot to say that if you struggle with docker, there is a direct install you can use. https://jellyfin.org/downloads/server Edit again: Documents here https://jellyfin.org/docs/