I’ve recently picked up a secondhand Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny PC which ultimately I plan to use as a home server for a variety of functions (media server being the main one) but I don’t need to use it as a main desktop.

It currently has Windows 10 installed. It has a decent sized SSD but no optical drive. I want to install a suitable Linux distro on it. What’s a good Linux distro for my needs? And what’s the best way of doing a scorched earth on the Windows install and replacing it with said distro?

I’m not entirely a Linux noob - I used to work on Xenix and later Red Hat Linux, but that was 30 and 20 years ago respectively!

  • twinnie@feddit.ukEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    If you just want a sensible headless server chuck Debian on and forget about it.

  • SemanticError@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    8 months ago

    I have the same pc and the hp equivalent. The Lenovo is running proxmox and the hp has Alpine running a bunch of docker containers. For my laptop (client) I run Debian 12. No frills, just works until I break it.

  • ReallyZen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Any. Think-stuff is usually very compliant, and being secondhand you’re not at risk of drivers not being available yet.

    Screams Debian tho. Latest version has a very nice installer, and the ability to auto-update security in the background (then politely ask you to reboot)

  • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Debian. If you don’t have any specific needs, Debian is always the safe bet for an OS that will serve you well

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    I use the Dell equivalent tiny PCs for my app servers. Debian is nice, general purpose, crazy stable, and pretty easy to work with. It runs my entire stack (well, Debian and OpenWRT).

    As far as nuking windows, just delete all the partitions on the disk when you’re at the partitioning stage of whatever distro’s installer. Then just make new partitions as you see fit.