Hopefully someone can shed some light on this idea. Or explain something that kind of fits/fills the use case and need. I am looking for a basic operating system that can be updated across multiple devices like a living OS.
For instance I have a desktop PC high end specs with the same Operating System as a laptop or tablet but it’s live sync. Meaning apps, files, changes made on one system are the same on all devices. I’ve looked at cloning drives and have done it. Far too slow and cumbersome.
This would be essentially changing devices based on hardware power requirements but having the same living operating system synced across all devices so all data and abilities remain the same anytime something is needed.
Maybe I’m being far fetched or what have you and this might possibly be in the wrong Sub. But I assumed it would fall under self hosted almost. Ive considered a NAS and I’m open to other ways to structure the concept ALL IDEAS WELCOME feel free to expand on it in any way. But dealing with different operating systems and architectures of various devices is wildly difficult sometimes for software, mobility, power requirements not watts but processing power, cross compatibility. I’ve seen apps that sync across devices but some desktop apps and mobile apps aren’t cross compatible and with self hosting so many services that function well across networks and devices after years of uptime you sort of forget the configs of everything it’s a nightmare when a single app update or container causes a domino affect. Thanks everyone hopefully this is helpful to others as well with similar needs.
You’re describing a number of different things here, but you’re thinking about it in an overly complex manner.
You need a centralized file store like a NAS, and a mountable workspace from said NAS that will mount to each machine, then you need some sort of Domain Directory service to join it all together. If you want the different desktops settings and stuff synced, you can achieve this with that setup, or you can go a step deeper and use an immutable distro of some sort, and commit and keep the same revision from one machine checked out on all your other machines (works kinda like a fit repo). This will likely present issues if it’s not all the same hardware though, so I would go with probably just keeping it simple if you go that route.
User experience example would like this:
Obviously this is simplified for the purposes of this post, but it should give you a direction to start investigating. Simplest path you can test this with is probably Samba, but it will be fairly limited and just serve as a starting point.
Edit: if these concepts are a bit much for you, maybe consider getting a NAS with a good UI to make managing it much simpler. Synology has this baked in already, and I think Qnap does as well: https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/active_directory
The immutable distro is nice which I started putting /home in a separate parrition as a start and syncing across devices. I’m working on setting up a NAS now to make the process more longerterm friendly. By working I mean aquiring drives for storage currently have about 6tb. I just didn’t fully know the process and what it entails for software besides Tailscale. I’ve self hosted servers for games and some minor stuff. I was thinking about using synology but their hardware is wildly expensive. I really only need the drivebay and I can connect it to my server PC. Ill do a deeper dive after work.
Certainly don’t need the Synology, just an option if you want things in a clean and tidy package with a UI to manage some things.
I like things that are easy to setup. While I don’t mind tinkering the older I get I want shit to just work. Hassle and diagnostic days are very few and far between as time gets less. Any good simple setups for some SSDs? I don’t mind a little setup but simple is preferred.
Sorry, I missed something. SSDs setup for what?
SSDs for fast transfers, and then maybe use HDDs for large slow stuff? I’m afraid transferring things are too slow on a HDD but I’ve never used a NAS. So I’m unsure of what determines transfer speeds I mean network speed has to play a role but read and write speed as well. I’ve had HDDs in several PCs and their just ungodly slow to do file transfers and game on but large sizes are cheaper. So I was asking essentially which storage type is best for fast NAS speeds? And what is a good setup to start with as far as software and hardware?
If you’re talking about network attached storage, you won’t see much benefit from SSDs since the network transfer speeds are the bottleneck. Example: SSD transfer rate of 3000MB/s, but your wifi may only go 500MB/s, or Ethernet 1000MB/s.
You’re better off just going HDD on a NAS, at least for the $/Tb. Just start with two disks in RAID1. More than good enough for what you’re trying to do.