I have an ancient PC that's been sat in the loft doing nothing. I've no idea what's in it, but it was last upgraded about 8 years ago, so it might not even be up to the task.
My theory is that it can sit in the corner and act as a Plex server (both for media on itself and on the NAS), but it's old and loud (although not as loud as I'd have thought), and I don't really want my energy bills to skyrocket because it's on 24/7 on the off-chance we want to watch a couple of episodes of something in the evening.
So... I figured that as long as it would switch on fairly quick, that wouldn't be an issue, but it doesn't (no SSD and Windows 7), so I had a potential brainwave of Linux on a USB stick. However, my Linux knowledge is next to nothing, so I'm a bit stumped.
First of all, is this even likely to work? I seem to be struggling to find an installation of Linux that boots nice and quickly. Is there one?
Assuming I get through that point, I've got an installation of Linux, with a Plex server running, but I can't actually get Plex to see any of the (NTFS) drives that are in the PC (although I can see them outside of Plex). Getting to media on the NAS is a whole other issue, but one step at a time.
This is all an incredibly elaborate solution to a problem that would probably be easier solved by just plugging my laptop into the network when we watch something, but this sounds like a much better use of my time
so I'm open to suggestions.
tldr - What's the fastest possible thing I can install to a USB stick that will get from Off to Plex server running (so it obviously has to be something that I can write to)?
How can I make Plex see my hard drives?
Someone please talk me through fstab so I can mount network shares.
For anyone that saw this pre-edit, don't worry, I don't want to try and use my recycled piss to power a plex server.