This got worse and worse with newer Windows versions in which you needed a decent size of RAM just to run Windows itself. Windows hoarded a lot of performance just for itself and for things you wouldn't even use or need. One of the reasons why I switched to Ubuntu at that time was because it had a much smaller performance footprint. I started with Windows because that was what I knew best at that time and whenever I used Linux I ended up having to scrap the whole system because I broke something without knowing how to reverse it.īut over the years that changed, Linux distributions got more user friendly and easier to use as a 'normal' user. I ran on various operating systems for my server over the years. I am by no stretch of the imagination, unfamiliar with Linux. In fact the reverse proxy sitting in front of my Plex server is running on Debian, and I also have other Debian VMs running assorted other services. in case anyone tries to call me out, I do use Linux very often. But for now, I'm happy with my windows install.

Now, if that Plex VM were to die tomorrow and I had to setup from scratch again, I would probably try out Linux. Running on Windows allows me to have easy integration with my Active Directory, and by passing through my Quadro P600 to the VM, I can take advantage of hardware transcoding.

I often see the overhead of Windows cited as a reason not to use it, but my Windows Server VM doesn't seem to have much overhead at all. I like being able to install Plex updates from the webui itself, and not having to load up an ssh session to my Plex machine to install updates. More specifically, I've been running Plex on a Windows Server 2019 VM running on my ESXi host. This is gonna be the unpopular opinion, but I've been running on Windows happily.

Osboxes ubuntu server