I bought a HP Elitedesk G2 mini PC for my dad which I want to put a Plex server on, that will be its prime job to send video to a TV and to a Firestick on another TV. I want to set it up such that if there was ever a power cut it would power back up without any user interaction, and load up the Plex server automatically. The PC came with a Windows 10 install, and I guess I could make this to be a local account with no password, and have it such that Plex loads on startup, but I am thinking about Windows sometimes wanting to update itself and needing manual booting or some other user interaction, and that is an absolute non starter. Also Windows 10 is due to become unsupported anyway in a bit.
The PC will have an NVME for boot and an internal SSD for the media. I have heard that external USB 3 drives can sometimes prove problematic in having them mount themselves etc, not too sure about that, but should be able to avoid the need to use external storage anyway. So my question is what flavour of Linux would best suit this kind of set up, where faultless zero user interaction is required after any power outage, and how can this sort of thing be set up in Linux? I think it does still need to have a GUI for when I am at the place to do any jiggery pokery with it, and occasionally use it as an actual PC, but the main requirement is for it to be able to reboot and go back into Plex like nothing has happened.
The PC will have an NVME for boot and an internal SSD for the media. I have heard that external USB 3 drives can sometimes prove problematic in having them mount themselves etc, not too sure about that, but should be able to avoid the need to use external storage anyway. So my question is what flavour of Linux would best suit this kind of set up, where faultless zero user interaction is required after any power outage, and how can this sort of thing be set up in Linux? I think it does still need to have a GUI for when I am at the place to do any jiggery pokery with it, and occasionally use it as an actual PC, but the main requirement is for it to be able to reboot and go back into Plex like nothing has happened.