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NAS OS selection for home lab running Plex and Home Assistant

A home lab user needs guidance on the best NAS operating system for a setup combining Plex media server and Home Assistant on consumer-grade hardware. The high upvote count (100) signals this is a widely shared decision point for the self-hosted community.

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4.05

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Problem descriptions, scores, analysis, and solution blueprints may be updated as new community data becomes available.