I haven't used linux in a long time, I am currently looking for mostly a media server for my libreelec kodi raspi 3 also that can download torrents and also have backups from my Windows gaming PC. later would be using itr top also check my emails web browsing and such
the build I have is actually an older server SuperMicro H8DGU-F with 2 Opteron ES chips at 2 Ghz picked it up for 100 CAD

Hi.

You're looking for opinions(! ) to replace LibreELEC Kodi or the server's OS?

What are the specs of the device in question?

Just about any major Linux distro could be used for the purposes you describe. How about burn some Live CD's of distros you are considering and boot to them to see which one most seems to suit your taste.

Why does it have to be Linux? Just curious.

my libreelec with kodi is on my raspi3 box I stream from my PC at the moment but now that I have a server I can put most everything on it and use Linux because it is free an d I used to actually like using linux.

I actually used to love Linux But for gaming I need windows so I stopped using Linux . I actually have a server(I have two 12 core (2.0 Ghz) ES Opteron G34 CPU's ZS202045TCG43. Clocked to 3.0GHz) right now 6 GB ram with no OS which I am going to put all of my Hard drives ( Movies TV series and docs probably my backups for my PC and laptop OS's) onto accept for my gaming PC games and OS . ass it is right now I have everything on my gaming PC .

If you have a 12-core processor, I guess you must have more than 6GB RAM.

Anyway, something like Fedora or Slackware will run well on this type of machine. Just make sure you do your partitioning well. Keep your home separate from the system files.

IMHO The most will work with KDE from here: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...weekly-builds/
try the rest but come back to the best. Slackware would be my second choice...

thanks will check that out.
I actually have 24 cores to processors. but I am only running three 1 Gb sticks per core for now

Any of the major linux distributions will be fine. My own preference is Debian. Debian Stable is nice because it keeps the same versions of software (so the behavior does not change on you) while also providing up to date security updates. This makes it an ideal server distribution. You'll definitely want to maintain security updates - especially for the torrent software, and anything else internet-facing.

A 12 core server is massive overkill for what's basically a file server (and yes, running torrents adds a little bit to usage, but not much really).

But hey, if it's what you've got and it's what has sufficient interfaces for all of your hard drives, then use what you've got!

With 6GB of RAM, you've got plenty for your basic purposes, but it's not so great if you want to run a bunch of VMs. Not that this matters if you aren't interested in playing around with VMs.

The big question is what you wish to do with your hard drives. It's tempting to use something like LVM and/or RAID to combine many hard drives into a single file system. However, it could prove to be a headache later on if/when one of the hard drives fail. You could have fewer headaches by simply making each hard drive a big ext4 partition (or maybe btrfs if you want to take advantage of deduping).

I would put the Debian OS on one of those hard drives (preferably an SSD if one of them's an SSD). No need for a separate /home or anything. Just stick it on the big partition itself. Fewer headaches that way, fewer things to worry about.

Do NOT create a swap partition on any drive other than the OS drive. That way, the system will continue to function if any of the other hard drives fail. The OS drive is a single point of failure, but IMHO the chance of failure is sufficiently low that it's no big deal. Recovery from an OS drive failure would be a new install of Debian on one of the other drives.

Any of the major distros should do all that you need, (as would BSD, if you fancy trying it).

There's virtualization with hardware pass through, that could allow you to game in windows under linux. Otherwise whatever distro you are comfortable with. And you might need more modern CPUs for the virtualization extras. Never done this stuff my self as I just recently got a computer with > 2GB of ram. Otherwise I'm more of a if it doesn't exist in linux, it doesn't exist kind of guy. I'd like to think that that keeps me more productive.

Visual Studio doesn't exist!!11!

Can I apt-get it?

Although I guess it does since I paid $500 for it in '97 and that was the student rate.