Hi all,

I want to spin up a small home server. Nothing crazy, maybe 4 or 8GB ram at most. 1 Docker instance running a few privacy frontends (Invidious, Redlib, Xcancel, SearxNG, etc.) and split tunneling VPN connections for each one.

Obviously, a Raspberry Pi 4 or higher is the internet’s favorite choice, but I don’t need wireless connectivity, I just need a single HDMI and 2 USB ports to get everything set up, one ethernet port, and a dream in my heart.

Has anyone use alternatives like Le Potato or Orange Pi? I’m curious what their community support is like, and if there’s a FOSS-friendly standard.

Thanks!

  • HiTekRedNek@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    It always starts small. I started with a 15 year old pre-ryzen AMD laptop, and an old external USB 4TB hard drive. NEW the laptop was $299.

    A year later, I have a ruckus/brocade managed switch, a Lenovo M700 Tiny running home assistant and Jellyfin, while my main media/file server is a Xeon E3-1275v3 with 2 SSDs, and 6 8TiB SAS3 enterprise hard drives in a ZFS pool. And a Pi5 running adguard home as my DNS server.

    And I’ve already used 60% of it. 🤣🤣

    • GreenShimada@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      Great advice. I found an old laptop and I’m putting it through the paces now, and I’m really surprised at how easy all of this is. Setting up my own Invidious instance took minutes. Immich is where I’ll need to plateau out, I expect. My partner will immediately fill up the laptop by dumping her phone onto it, so that will need to wait for a long-term solution. That being said, a Lenovo mini whatever seems like a solid standard.