Roon core on Ubuntu or TrueNAS

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Hello, I was wondering if I can ask for some advice. I am running Roon core on an old Qnap NAS. And it’s okay.
But I have a decent 9th gen core i5, 16GB, 256 M.2 PC, With Ubuntu 20.04 installed, which is not being used at the moment.

Was thinking of using the Ubuntu machine as a Roon Core and local storage for photo, video and media files. (Using the drives from the NAS) and running it headless most of the time via Ethernet.

Would Ubuntu desktop be the easies option for someone that is not very comfortable with using command line? (I can do basics) or is there any other options. If I installed TrueNAS instead, could I run Roon core on that?

Any suggestions are very appropriated.

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I run roon on ubuntu server 20.04. I was linux novice when I started and wanted to learn a bit. A little bit of google and some patience I was able to get stuff up and running with relative ease.

There was an article on here that I used to get me through it.

Im no linux guy, but some other things that I used to help me manage my roon instance and some pointers to potentially help.

  • mobaXTerm this is a nice terminal tool for ssh connecting to your linux instance.
  • I also run samba to allow me to expose the media on my server to my home network.
  • Cockpit - This helps with getting an over view of things on your system via a web ui. Nice way to check for updates or other things and has a great network of extensions for managing things like VMs or Docker containers.
  • Getting my head around mounting a drive as someone coming from a windows world took a bit to get my head around. I over complicated my setup by having for drives and 16TB of storage.
  • The command lines to execute are pretty simple stuff. e.g. sudo apt install [packagename] or things along that line. I know it can seem intimidating, its not once you get you get into it. Google is your friend.

It was fun to learn a bunch of new stuff and has been somewhat of a starting poitn for me to start learning about docker, VMs etc.

Given all of that, if you’re looking for easy-ish, I dont know how much the UI brings to the process of installing and managing apt packages the desktop can help with a lot of the networking or drive mounting aspects.

hth

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If you have Ubuntu Desktop installed, you can simply log in and (in a terminal)

sudo apt -y install cifs-utils ffmpeg

(probable already installed), then (from the above mentioned Roon doc, you can copy & paste the commands from there)

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thanks you both for all the info, much appreciated. I am more comfortable with the Ubuntu desktop, as appose to the server without an UI. and not just for Roon, but as I want to add a few HDs to use as a home media server. I know the server OS option is probably the proper way to go. Will do some experimenting, and see how it goes.

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It’s certainly no problem running the desktop, it is simply a superset of the packages and processes. So you can check out what else linux has to offer.

If you wanted a puristic headless setup you could disable the gui, but unless you’re short of resources, that’s exaggerated.

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Core runs perfect on Linux Ubuntu.
I ran 21.10 and some older versions of Ubuntu server. No issues.

I believe the Roon team optimised for Linux not long ago.
I believe resources were optimised to make a smoother experience.

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Thanks for the help. I’ve did manage to install Roon server on Ubuntu and it all works well so far. Now trying to setu up Samba shares to be able to use the PC as a home NAS as well… takes me a bit of time to figure things out, but it’s fun learning all this. Cheers again!!

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