this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Selfhosted

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Dear readers,

If (TLDR) { ISO: tech stacks advice + FOSS tech and tech educative material advice for self-hosting a basic home lab FT: an opportunity to build your profile’s tech expertise reputation. } else; { I would like to collect opinions about hardware and software stack options.

I would like to build a home server for basic purposes (file storage sync (family, work, movies, music, etc.).

Ideally, I would like to use the same machine for self-hosting: (a) a small lemmy community instance server, (b) a small chat server (e.g. XMPP)

I have accrued decent practice with html, css, javascript, and linux systems administration. For example, my home lab boasts 1 laptop file synced with 1 smartphone, and I have written a few very basic dynamic web apps.

That being said, the vastness, complexity and technicality of the various options seem to me daunting to make sense of, even with some basic clear goals.

Although I expect to have some more research to do, I suspect that someone with more competence than myself may find interest in disbursing a few easy comments of competent advisory opinion to narrow and expedite my research effort as an opportunity of building their own profile’s reputation.

Requirements:

FOSS tech, to the extent that that produces a top security and top quality solution.

Beginner friendly budget.

Early estimates of specs under my consideration: mini-pc, O-droid, normal form factor pc, laptop. ~ 16GB ~ 64 GB RAM. Storage: ideally minimum 5 TB, ideally minimum 3-2-1 rule. OS? FS?

} Sorry about the length of the post, sorry about solicitation of advice.

Thanks for the support.

Sincerely,

LinuxTurtle34

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[–] 10001110101@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago

If you're running a lot of stuff on the same server, I agree with others that you'd want to use containers or VMs to avoid possible dependency hell. I prefer containers so I don't have multiple OSs using RAM. I've never used Proxmox, but if I understand correctly, it's an OS specifically built for running containers and VMs more easily, so I'm guessing that'd be a good choice. I personally just use Ubuntu LTS or Debian, Docker, and SSH to administer my servers, because that's what I'm familiar with.

A cheap used Desktop PC off Craigslist or whatever should be fine. Desktops are more upgradable and configurable. You'd want to make sure the CPU and Mobo support however much RAM you'd want. Ext4 is fine if using a single disk; ZFS for multiple disks with redundancy. Preferably, a smallish SSD for the OS disk, but not required.

*arr stack for pirating: https://wiki.servarr.com/

Jellyfin for serving media. You may want something like the cheapest Intel Arc GPU for transcoding if you're going to serve HDR video to low-spec devices.

Nextcloud for basic file sharing. NFS for high performance file sharing with Linux machines, if needed. Syncthing for syncing files if you need that.

Immich for something similar to Google Photos, if needed.