Suggested OS For Ripping/Media Player Station?

[AssuredlyAnAlt]

I recently used some spare parts to build out a ripping PC, using an HTPC style chassis that allows for front optical drive access.
I have a nice 4K drive installed, but I'm not entirely sure what would be a smart choice of OS.

I'm very familiar with Windows, and could just throw Windows 10 LTSC IoT on there, but it seems like Linux would probably be a smarter / better approach.
In thinking about the software side of this project, I was thinking it would be pretty sweet to be able to insert various kinds of physical discs and have them work, including maybe some game emulators to make use of my physical collections.

It seems like Linux would be a good idea, but I'm not sure if there's a particular distro already setup to do this sort of thing, or at least close to it. Ideally I would like to get Bluray menu support working if possible. I have been running mainly Debian derivatives, but am curious about stuff like Cachey OS as well, so I'm kinda open to any suggestions. I figured if anyone has already built their own ripping station, it'd be people on here

[flojo]

Blu-ray menu support is dependent upon 1 library and Java's JRE so I don't think the OS matters. I *think* like most software in 2025 that the library is developed on Linux, but I don't think it matters.

As far as I know, Windows doesn't support many filesystem options you might want to use like ZFS or XFS. In my opinion XFS is the go to single drive filesystem and ZFS is the easiest multi-drive RAID with parity.

If you want to run emulators on the same machine you'd probably want to use Windows because Linux game emulator support isn't as good as Windows or Android.

With very few media players being update anymore, HTPC is kind of dead. Kodi still adds some things, but not often, so does NOVA Video Player, but they don't add much anymore. You want something that can decode Dolby Vision P8 and HDR10+ and sadly I don't know of any PC hardware that can do that.

Personally I'd repurpose your HTPC as a small NAS with OpenMediaVault and use something like a Amazon Firestick 4K as the client or a similar "streaming" stick that players like Kodi, NOVA, etc. can be installed on.

[dcoke22]

I generally agree with flojo. I do ripping on my desk where it is convenient to store optical drives and access them and my computer at the same time. I have an AppleTV 4K plugged into my TV that does all my client duties. I use TrueNAS on a PC with a dozen hard drives for storage. It sits in a utility room in my house next to the other servers that are running. Both Plex and Jellyfin are used at my house.

I have seen people build one box to do it all, but I wouldn't want to go to my utility room to put a disc in an optical drive and I sure wouldn't want a bunch of hard drives clicking incessantly in my home office or while I'm trying to watch a movie.