So I have a Synology server that I have a good deal of experience with, so this post will be through that lens.

What I’d like to do is set up a Raspberry Pi exclusively for pirating. So Qbittorrent and Proton VPN to get started, later Radarr, Lidarr, etc. I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting the Pi up and running, but I’d like to run it like my server, tucked away somewhere without a monitor or peripherals.

How do I access it? For my Synology box, I just put in a browser the local ip port 5000 and I have a whole desktop right there. But when I google about how I’d access a Pi, everything points to using SSH. I know a lot of people have Pis set up like this and surely they can’t be administering the whole thing through CLI, right? How do I get a similar setup to my Synology such that I can just get a desktop interface in a browser?

  • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    I know a lot of people have Pis set up like this and surely they can’t be administering the whole thing through CLI, right?

    We are, indeed. I use a combination of SSH (for quick stuff), and Ansible for stuff I need to do repeatedly.

    How do I get a similar setup to my Synology such that I can just get a desktop interface in a browser?

    The tool you’re looking for is a ’VNC’ solution. There’s lots of them, and the best ones are free.

    You can enable VNC on your Raspberry Pi through Raspi-Config. You’ll also need a VNC client on each device you want to connect from. Fin linked one above, I think.

    And now some un- requested advice from me:

    You mention running Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi.

    If you choose Ubuntu, I believe you will encounter many recipes online that will not work, because Ubuntu does not come with various Raspberry Pi specific tools pre-installed, such as raspi-config.

    Raspbian and Ubuntu are extremely similar (this is intentional).

    But I have found:

    • Many Raspberry Pi recipes will not work on Ubuntu, because Ubuntu does not include Pi specific software that is included in Raspbian.
    • Most Ubuntu recipes work perfectly on Raspbian.

    I think the Raspbian software can be added on top of Ubuntu, but I’ve never cared enough about the minor differences to even try.

    The Ubuntu recipes I have found that don’t work on Raspbian also don’t work on Pi hardware at all, until I compile additional tools from source code. (A Raspberry Pi uses an ARM chip, which is cool, but makes it harder install some software that doesn’t support it.)