I have an old laptop that I want to turn into a server, but I want it to be as seamless as possible. I don’t have any knowledge in web hosting, so I’ll use whatever distribution makes it easiest.
Also willing to venture outside of Linux territory to try those NAS-like operating systems. I just want things to work.
I called it old, but the laptop in question actually has decent specs. I want to host a personal searx instance, a forum, nextcloud, and, well, I’d also like to run single-user fediverse instances but I heard that they’re very hard to manage and update so I’m still not sure about that.
Ubuntu Server (Or really just Ubuntu) is probably going to be the easiest in terms of package support, general support, and usability. It’s pretty straightforward and there’s infinite tutorials for everything you could possibly want to do
Yep. Could consider Lubuntu too.
OPs usecase is for server. afaik gui is useless for that.
I always find Ubuntu super disorganized and bloated with outdated packages causing tons of problems. I’d recommend something a little more bleeding edge but trim such as Alpine Linux or even FreeBSD.