themadcodger

Do that. Install Bazzite, they go out of their way to make everything just work so you don’t have to. And since you’re nervous about messing something up, Bazzite has the extra benefit of being an immutable distro, which means you can’t actually change any of the important files that keep your computer running (not easily). So you can’t mess up your OS, updates happen in the background and only apply when you restart, and rolling back to the previous update is easy should you need to.

One thing to decode though is your desktop environment of KDE or GNOME. KDE is a bit more like windows in layout, GNOME is more like a Mac layout. Purely personal preference.

Bonus, if you end up loving Bazzite, you can install it on your steamdeck, which is what I did.

What’s yours look like?

This is what I’ve been trying to figure out, so I’m glad you did it. I have a Synology too and I’ve outgrown it, but building my own server scratch is daunting so I just wanted to hook a DAS up to a mini PC and call it good. But there were a lot of people online saying it was a bad idea.

I did the notification thing. If the outdoor temperature is lower than my indoor temperature and above 17° and the humidity is under 60% and the windows are closed, it sends me a notification to open them.

Same if the outdoor temps get above 24° and the windows are still open, it reminds me to close them.

I love the integrations with immich and owntracks, as well as having an OIDC login. What kind of resources does this need for a server?

Are you looking for Docker Desktop specifically? Or will docker/podman work for the time being? If you don’t already have it, bazzite-dx comes with docker pre-installed, which would be a simple rebase to get you there.

OpenOffice has more or less been dead for a while. Check out LibreOffice, its spiritual successor, or OnlyOffice (which people have opinions about because it’s Russian developed [I think the guy is actually Latvian]).

Also, my vote is for Bazzite. Gaming based and works out of the box with constant updates as long as you restart your computer with easy rollback if something goes wrong. Hard to break your computer, but if you like tinkering it’ll have to be containerized.

Desktop is an important choice for look and feel so check out the difference between GNOME and KDE the two main variants.

Same with Mandrake, though I can’t remember what version number.

I installed it on my SteamDeck and have its non-gaming sister on my laptop and I love it.

Thanks!

You have a CNAME record that points service.my.domain to machine-that-hosts-caddy.ts-domain.ts.net, and with tailscale enable it hits the caddy server and then reverse proxies it to the machine:port of “service”? Which may or may not be the tailscale IP address and port?

We all got to learn somewhere!

Lot of good advice here, but sometimes people forget what it’s like to be a beginner. Since you don’t know what you’re doing, I would recommend not trying to host things on your home server and access it from the outside world. That usually involves port forwarding on your router, and that comes with a lot of risks, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Others have mentioned it, but a better option when you’re starting off is to rent a vps and host your software there.

Squarespace might work, but my guess is it’ll be easier to transfer your domain elsewhere. You can follow guides for that online and it’s pretty straightforward.

Having a vps, a domain name, you’re most of the way there. On your vps, you’ll want to install a reverse proxy, which is what routes incoming urls to the right place (nextcloud.domain.tld goes here, calendar.domain.tld goes there).

Docker is another thing I’d recommend learning as a lot of what you’ll self host will likely be in a Docker container. I’d watch a few YouTube videos to see how it’s done. This channel has some great videos, and there are others out there.

It seems like a lot, but learn a little here and there and don’t expect to have this all working overnight. You’ll get there!

Nextcloud got too bulky for me, and in my search I tried a number of different options before installing OpenCloud without realizing it isn’t fully finished yet. That said, it still works well enough for my use case.

Tailscale is great for not opening your ports to the internet. Having it playable on a friend’s appletv adds some extra complexity. Reverse proxy on a subdomain with something like fail2ban would work, but it does leave you more vulnerable.

Wait, for real? Gen Alpha doesn’t know what a file type is??

I have a 220+. It works well for what it’s supposed to be. If you want a set it and forget it nas, this is a good one. However, after a year and a half, I’m ready to move on for the same reason I don’t like Apple: too walled garden. It was a great starter nas, but it’s too limiting now. But again, of you don’t want to think about it and just have it work, it’s a good choice.

The LLM for home assistant, or just HA in general doesn’t move the needle? My HA is also pretty low key, but I was considering the idea of running my own small llm to use with HA to get off of OpenAI. My current AI usage is very small, so I wouldn’t need too much on the GPU side I’d imagine, but I don’t know what’s sufficient.

I think I mentioned somewhere, but if not, over the last couple of years I learned a lot about the software side of running my homelab via synology and the vps’s, but I still know almost nothing about hardware, so this is all really useful information. Thanks!

So I want to reduce the cooling, CPU (get one with integrated graphics), and motherboard, and not necessary but look into adding ssd and more memory.

I’m okay with spending a bit up front if it’ll last a long time, but I also don’t want to buy too much and be useless.

Yeah, I posted this assuming I would get a lot of comments about it being more than I needed, and this was already me paring it down. But then I got a lot of comments saying to add more memory, reduce the cooling, and add a ssd but otherwise not much about reducing it.

Yeah, I’m not sure if I really want to deal with an llm. It would mostly be for home assistant, so nothing too crazy.