Post by @Profligate_parasite@lemmy.world

2026-11-02 21:29 UTC

Time to start over...Thoughts on Umbrel OS? UPDATE 11/5: Thank you to everyone who has commented & advised me! I found thishttps://selfhostable.dev/…/casaos-vs-umbrel-v… Which seems relatively sane, also thanks for those who pointed me to TechDadLife. I’m skipping Umbrel (just toooooo simple…) and going with Yunohost or reCasaOS for a more supported, up-to-date GUI front end. Cheers! TL:DR - have you used UmbralOS on a non-umbral device? Is it pretty straightforward? Reliable? Easy to use for a simple media server? THE TL: SO my mini-pc’s M.2 SSD shit the bed, and I’m essentially forced to rebuild my media server from backups, etc. I keep my actual media on USB external drives, and backup my configs/YAML regularly, so not the end of the world. I’ve put in a new SSD and ready to restart… but as they say, each problem is also an opportunity, and I’m considering switching the structure/interface of the server. Instead of pure, headless CLI ubuntu server, I previously used CasaOS, as, at the time, I was new to hosting, and other users in my household are absolutely allergic to CLI and pretty much always will be. CasaOS is nice because the Debian CLI is there for me if I need it, but running on top is an “Okay” GUI that has familiar things like “apps” and folders with folder structures. Even though I’m much more experienced than I was, say, a year ago, I still think I’d rather not do “pure” CLI docker compose. I only need a couple, simple services, that are easier for other household members to interact with independently if it has a GUI. If you think there’s a compelling reason I should change my mind on that, tell me why. CasaOS over the past year ish has started to feel very much like abandonware, however, as they’ve moved to ZimaOS (which is waaay more than we need, I’m not running a RAID or trying to set up 20+self-hosted services…Does anyone have experience with UmbralOS (especially on NON-Umbral hardware, and with USB external HDD storage) It’s for a simple media & file hosting experience via Jellyfin, primarily. We’re running an ARR stack, Jellyseer & Jellyfin with Nextcloud for photos & documents. My mini pc is a GEEKOM Air12 LITE which is not particularly beefy on specs… though I’m going to add another 8 gb of RAM to it when I upgrade. Any thoughts/advice are so greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Replies (7)

@DarthRox@social.vivaldi.net 2026-11-02 21:52

@Profligate_parasite@lemmy.world Sounds very promising but who is the company behind it and on which OS is umbrelOS based? Can't find any further Informations on their website.

Open ##5512555
@Willdrick@lemmy.world 2026-11-03 03:36

Started with the beta of CasaOS, really welcoming discord community and all, but when I went from a busted laptop to a purpose-built machine, I dove into the deep end and went with Proxmox. It can be daunting at first with all that lingo but there are plenty of good tutorials. Can’t recommend enough. Also as a gap closer, there’s proxmox community scripts, which are great to spin new LXCs to tinker with and learn/try new stuff without annoying the family with downtime

Open ##5512915
@panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 2026-11-03 05:00

They only have documentation in the form of agent skills… I don’t get this though, is there a desktop environment if you buy the hdmi one, or is it like a browser in kiosk mode, do all the apps use the same components? How do does transfer between web apps, especially since the docs point app development to be silos? A lot of interesting ideas for managing a self hosted app stack though. What would be cool is if they had centralized managed s3 and vebored databases but behind the scenes it was working to a shared cross app system. Then you could set up search indexes and stuff on that.

Open ##5514576
@doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-11-03 05:38

I’ve installed UmbrelOS on a NUC for my father. He uses Immich and with Umbrel he can manage his instance himself. He’s happy with it. And if something goes wrong, I can probably unfuck it because under the hood it’s just docker.

Open ##5515147
@hellmo_luciferrari@lemmy.zip 2026-11-03 02:07

Use whatever works for you, but I avoid specialized OSs like this. Headless is the way I go. If you want a GUI use Portsiner, or Dockage, or Arcane. Headless with all of my yml files backed up for easy spinning up on a new install or device.

Open ##5516715
@benno@sh.itjust.works 2026-11-03 06:54

looks vibecoded and their image with “Good Morning, Chad” also has a vibe (derogatory)

Open ##5516733
@i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 2026-11-04 04:11

So far I’ve been quite pleased with Yunohost. Comprehensive list of apps and easy to maintain via web ui (and optionnal cli, but it’s mostly the same as the web ui) I haven’t had to restore a backup yet, so unsure about that, but otherwise it runs immich and nextcloud quite nicely. I really appreciate the centralized account management.

Open ##5518771