All that is running fine on 16gb of RAM?
My dashboard says that containers are using 50% of the ram. The server PC itself is using a bunch of ram on top of that because I ended up installing g Debian with the full KDE desktop emvironment. I ended up removing some resource hogs that I didn’t need (Element server, Linkwarden, etc).
The best way to get to grip with how this works is to start using it.
Yup works great. The NAS drive auto mounts as an NTFS drive on the server with read/write access. All works smoothly.
You don’t need much to self host and don’t let people online gatekeep or exclude you or intimidate you with complex racks. An old PC repurposed to a home server gets you started and is enough for a lot of stuff. You can always expand as needed in the future.
Here’s my setup:
Storage is on a NAS: synology 2 bay NAS with 8TB (media: photos, movies, TV shows, books, comics) and 2 TB HDD (Kopia backup snapshots). I don’t need RAID configurations. Important data is already 3-2-1 backed up and if an HDD fails then I’ll just replace it when I get to that point.
Server: Headless mini PC with Debian with a 12th gen intel, 16gb ram, 1tb NVME (mostly live data, shared folder, game saves, etc). I’m building a new machine and have yet to decide if I want to replace the server or use that as a gaming machine, but the has a Core 5 Ultra 125H processor and LPDDR5 RAM and is super power efficient and silent.
Docker containers:
actual (budgeting)
affine (note taking)
bentopdf (PDF editing)
beszel (server status monitoring)
dockge (Docker management)
guacamole (server remote desktop access)
immich (photo application, backup, gallery and Al tagging)
jellyfin (video and music server)
jotty (quick notes and task/shopping lists)
kavita (comic books and ebooks)
kopia (backups)
floccus (bookmark backup and sync across browsers)
mattermost (used solo for sharing text, links, files, etc to myself)
papra (document scanning and OCR)
opodsync (gpodder podcast sync backend)
prunemate (automated scheduled docker pruning)
samba (file sharing on the local netwrok)
syncthing (mostly used to keep retro/emulated games in sync across devices)
tiny tiny rss (RSS platform)
vpn-torrent-stack (conatining gbittorrent, prowlarr, flaresolverr, radarr, sonarr, all running through gluetun VPN on a VPN server)
watchtower (automatic docker updates)
Synology Cloud Sync sends the Kopia backup snapshots to my Backblaze online storage and also keeps a local folder synced with my Mailbox.org cloud drive.
Synology also handles the reverse proxy access.
7th gen Intel with integrated graphics isnt going to be able to do much gaming (maybe some very retro emulation and very low spec indie PC games). I certainly wouldn’t bother going with Bazzite. If you’re looking for something exclusively for gaming then a secondhand Retroid Pocket 5 console (android handheld) is going to do much better for even less money than this.
My wife hates Jellyfin. When the whole world’s media is at her fingertips, she gets choice paralysis. She finds it easier for Netflix to serve up a small number of suggestions and just pick from there, even they’re all crap suggestions.
Ive found it so much better to disconnect from suggestion algorithms. I’m much more intentional with what I watch. I never run out of things to watch. I bookmark movies and TV shows from organic suggestions from friends, family and Lemmy, or from podcasts, critic reviews, my followed YouTube channels, etc. Everything on my Jellyfin is curated content that I want to watch.
At this point Pewdiepie has done more for Linux than LTT has.
I have sympathy for the point he was making to say it is really difficult to choose correctly and that guides can point people in confusing directions. And veterans who advocate taking the difficult path can make it more confusing.
But he needs to stop acting like a noob and be the tech guru he claims to be. He needs to contribute to the conversation by saying “it can be difficult to choose as a beginner…but here are 3 good options… Mint, Bazzite, etc etc”. He can even cover the common pitfalls for beginners and oddities of Linux misbehaving with certain hardware and how one can go about resolving the issues.
I wasn’t outraged at his first video as many others were years ago. But running a tech media company, having truckloads of expertise in house, supposedly wanting to support self-hosting and framework laptops, etc…and then doing this shit…come on man.
Is there a good alternative that you would recommend?
Kavita has been good. I wanted to use it more for organising, fetching metadata and reading comic books from the server. Works well with Android and the Kahon app (+Kavita extension) on my Android tablet.
This is the origin of the phrase “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
It’s 55°C inside and constantly sounds like a jet is getting ready to take off. Also the bucket is lost so you need to be ready to piss on the server at a moment’s notice.
I use this already. Works great. Thanks for your hard work on this.
I’m using Calibre web to organise books, convert format and download metadata; and then use Kavita to read my books/comics. Works great.
Synology. Although I’m sure other ready made NAS machines will probably work and be chapter if you want to explore.
“Make people study”? You’re mistaken. No one is making anyone study.
Charge people to study? You bet your ass they’ll take as many people as are willing to pay their overpriced fees. Finding a job after? Getting decent pay? That’s a you problem as far as they’re concerned.
This is likely not going to be a welcome comment on Lemmy, but here goes anyway: I would not have been able to stick with Linux without AI and I would recommend you use that.
It’s really difficult going through tech support steps with people online (all commenters are looking for more information and would have to guide you through multiple steps). AI has the patience to put up with absolute beginner questions.
Now it’s important to know how to use AI and not think it knows correct answers to your short questions. Claude had worked best in my experience. Primarily you should use it in this way: feed it a detailed description of your problem. Give it all the context of what hardware and software you have and exactly what you’re trying to do and what’s not working. Then it will give you an answer with some idea of where the problem might be. Then you should go and do an internet search of that identified problem to find a solution (not just take in the solutions AI gives you, although you could try initial simple solutions, but you may break things if you just go pasting commands into console without understanding). This is what AI is most useful for, pointing you in the direction of the cause problems… Not being a know all oracle. Paste in a detailed log output and it will interpret and tell you where the problem is, then you must go looking for solutions from a reputable source.
There’s a lot that sucks about AI, but I wouldn’t have been able to adopt Linux or set up my self hosted services on my home server without it; and I’m grateful for that.
That was my understanding, that Immich and PaperlessNGX run AI locally on your machine. That’s why the server PC sounds like a fighter jet ready to take off for hours on end when a large library is first added.
Half the content is screenshots of twitter. The other content from Reddit.
If you’re getting a mini PC then your NAS can be older and really underpowered since it’s literally just housing your HDDs and not running compute heavy tasks.
You might need a bit more horsepower if you want to use Immich AI and PaperlessNGX AI.
eBay has been great and secondhand tech is worth taking the (small) risk on for the big savings. Get an old NAS that still gets firmware updates. Synology has worked great for me since it handles reverse proxy safely without me trying to learn that myself and doing a bad job to leave my server exposed and vulnerable. Get a mini PC suitable for your needs. I got a 12th gen Intel one earlier this year for £230, many companies dump “old” stock that’s perfectly functional. Look out for which CPU has a good enough iGPU for your needs if you need something like Jellyfin video transcoding.
It works fine with 2 simultaneous direct play streams. Haven’t tested beyond that.