My homelab is a mishmash of Windows and Linux machines. The primary game server is Windows and the rest others are Linux.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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I was at this point for a while, believing gaming on Linux wasn't up to par, until I discovered that Linux has a decent translation layer (Proton/Wine) that means even though the vast majority of Steam games are Windows only, Steam or other launchers like Heroic just run them in a container, and from my experience none of my games have had issues. This has only improved massively over the years.
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That's so cool! Have you ever tried a BSD?
I've experimented with OpenBSD in the past, but it was back when I was solely a Windows kid before embracing and clicking with Linux. It just never really meshed with me.
Windows is what I already but I'm also curious to learn linux and bsd at some point.
Well yeah but... Why would you? It's unnecessarily making things hard on yourself for so many reasons.
My Linux computer is like a giant basket of free Legos and I can build whatever the hell I want easily
For learning. Most enterprises use windows servers. The IT job market is mostly windows server for entry / mid level jobs.
Even if you don't use it day to day. Its great to understand how it works.
I’m not a windows hater per se, but I am for using the best tool for the job.
And in my opinion windows is not the best tool for self hosting. There are things windows does work well for that meshes well with self hosting and that’s docker. Honestly I’d focus on that for a lot of reasons but primarily because it’s a very easy to deploy self contained way to provide services. And the differences between docker on windows and Linux is almost negligible.
I self hosted windows for many years, mostly because that is what I used at work. I liked it because it hid some of the low level details and worked most of the time.
The thing that finally made me switch was the exorbitant cost of licenses and the need to run services on older hardware.
DM me if you want some keys. I have a few copies of win10 and winIOT laying around that I'm not going to use.
They better be! I've got a mix of proxmox running Windows and Linux machines, as well as a bare metal Windows machine for streaming gaming, as wells as Linux laptops to access all this.
... My only shame is using Windows server to host my DHCP server.
Many of us started running Windows Server and endpoints, but in my case, the cost and substandard tools turned me away. I was running A DLNA server and using WDS (yes, very overkill for home, but fun to learn for work), but then I found TrueNAS (then called FreeNAS) running on BSD. I now run a simple share from there and Kodi on my (Linux and Android) user endpoints. I don't bother with imaging anymore, and use dd for backups to my NAS. My Firewall runs OPNSense (BSD) and I run OpenWRT on two TrendNet WAPs.
I'll never go back to MS. It's just not a welcoming platform from my perspective. Don't even get me started on .NET or the various and sundry "redistributables" constantly required by every tool you try to use.
dotnet is pretty great, runs great on Linux, and you can ship your executable without a need for an external framework if you want.
Dotnet is also open source, a strongly typed language, a large standard library so it doesn't have the problems of npm, has great performance and is all around the best language out there imo.
Use rust if you need to be closer to the metal, but that's rare.
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Don’t even get me started on .NET or the various and sundry “redistributables” constantly required by every tool you try to use.
It's absurd but Linux is far worse. Instead of addressing library bloat and versioning we have Docker which just throws EVERYTHING into a bag and makes you download an entire OS environment space to run one app.
And that is perfect. Instead of setting up one VM for each service and manually updating all dependencies, I’d much rather use that very handy bag with everything in it.
But the op is complaining about the much lighter .net where the shared libraries for all apps are a fraction of the space of bringing in an entire OS environment for each and every app.
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I self host on windows. It just happened to be what I had on the box. Then I got started with docker. So that was great. When I have the time, I hope to switch to unraid, but need the time to be open enough to deal with the problem that will arise in getting the system set up just right.
100% there is room for Windows self hosters. Welcome. May your self hosting be productive, secure and fun.
I self-hosted Plex and Jellyfin on Windows. It's fine. But as others have said, Windows machines tend to be too power-hungry. Honestly I think that's more a symptom of x86-64. Changing the OS from Windows to Linux does not magically change the power needs of the hardware. (However, Linux tends to demand less of the hardware, especially if there's no GUI.)
I now self-host Plex on a Mac mini (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM/512GB SSD). M2 Pro in Intel speak is like i5 as in, it's the "next one up" and "good enough for most people" but not the low entry into the platform (M# base or i3), though I'd say M4/M5 base is better than M2 Pro. Just like going 2-3 generations newer, the i3 gets closer to and may surpass an older i5.
There's a reason self-hosters prefer Linux, but I'd think it would be more about the hardware than the software. Windows is problematic because you're opening ports and Windows is a target due to its massive market share. Mac is kinda (/sorta /not really) UNIX based, and Linux is, well, it's Linux; neither is bulletproof, but both are better than Windows because they're not really being targeted. That said, the MacBook Neo and Mac Mini going for $500 if you're a student, $600 otherwise is getting a lot of people sick of Microslop's BS to switch, and the Neo in particular is forcing the PC market to get competitive as macOS market share is rising — this also makes it more of a target. You're always at some risk online and a little common sense goes a long way.
I started out self hosting with windows server 2012 because my school was a Microsoft and Cisco partner but mostly ran Linux VMs on it using hardware raid. Ran bitwarden, Plex and a wiki plus a VM with a bunch of docker containers. Ran that for about 3 years and now have been on Unraid for 6 or so years and loving it.
I guess everyone is welcome, from windows to people doing it on OSes they made themselves!
Are you hosting on win server? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to shill Linux though I prefer it on the server side, believe me I've been on the receiving end of that for desktop Linux. How do you manage it? Do you have your home LAN set up as an active directory domain? Do you use mostly Powershell or the GUI? What do you have running on it? It just seems like everything on the server side assumes you're using Linux and the only stuff that runs on Win server is stuff made by Microsoft like MS SQL server or IIS.
You can find a description of my first project here https://lemmy.world/post/48204688
Private email. Very nice 👍
Thanks!
You will not find many people who willingly work with Windows servers, there is a reason for this. That being said, one point of self hosting is that you can do everything the way you want. So you do you.
I don't see why not.
While I have no respect for Windows people, it’s interesting to read through their failures. Yeah, do Windows instead of spending bits of your time to make an effort at learning something new.
I mean it, in a non-sarcastic way. You can start with Windows, and if you won’t give up on this hobby, I bet you’d come to some open source system instead at some point. After all, the entire self-hosting point is not in ditching Windows, but ditching proprietary thing corporations lure people to use, to farm their data and money too. And attention, not the least thing. It’s just that Windows is precisely the very thing a self-hoster would despise.
Having one to boot into ‘launch that game’ mode makes sense to some, but running it to run some services 24/7, makes little sense, if at all.
Sure thing!
(also, please do post about it when you eventually decide to switch to linux)