Hello , dear lemmy users , I am starting to really like self-host because they are really fast and mostly i use open source stuff (like lemmy /photon etc) which were sometimes slow but after self hosting it now on the pc i am on using , i really like it

Now , I would like to host some stuff like jellyfin , navindrome , photon , adgaurd home and just leave it running on a device in maybe near future (i can convince my brother to pay for it , after he gets his job maybe)

TLDR : I wanted to ask What’s your favourite alternative to raspberry pi for simple self hosting or maybe possible near home automation

Edit: thank you all for helping me , I am starting to believe that i should look into using dell wyse or the likes which are meant to be used for hosting or a old laptop (since i dont own a laptop anyway , i just own a pc ) and since i run linux anyways , i am thinking of owning a laptop dual booting it with alpine (that has docker) and a simple minimalist os like hyprland on it just in case i need to travel with it (which to me seems very unlikely , I dont travel much so…) I am confused about it

Edit 2 : I am very new to self hosting so currently i would run stuff on my pc only (using portainer) , However when needed to buy , i am thinking of buying the cheapest thin client maybe a nuc or dell wyse

I am already trying searxng , shiori(bookmark manager) , portainer,freshrss , photon , froodle-s pdf tool which i have all closed except portainer currently I am also thinking of shifting to podman as well but cant find a good gui for it like portainer , (portainer really just blew my mind with its templates)

  • floridamanEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    I’d recommend an x86 board because as great as the RPI and similar can be, ARM just doesn’t have the same support for a lot of things you might want to self host. I personally like to spring for a used thinclient PC off of eBay, because they have about the same resources as a Raspberry Pi but on an x86 platform. With my thin clients I typically install Alpine but a really light Debian install could work as well, and then from there you can go about installing Docker etc for a little homelab. Even better, if you get lucky and get a couple of them you could mess around with clustering them and some light Kubernetes at home. I’ve got mine running PiHole and Unbound on Alpine to serve my whole house with DNS and it works great. I don’t think I’ve had hardly any downtime issues or anything of that sort.

    TL;DR: try a couple cheap thin clients from eBay and you can run some light stuff on them for cheap.

    • thirdBreakfast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I’m seconding this. The Pi-supply-dry is getting better, but for similar money to a Pi4 you can get an ex-corporate 1L mini PC (I like the HP G1 800’s in a nice case, with engineered cooling, real storage, and easy memory upgrades.

    • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      ARM just doesn’t have the same support for a lot of things you might want to self host

      Like what? Person explicitly mentioned opensource software.

      used thinclient PC

      Usualy thay are cheap used, so it might work too

      • floridamanEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        ARM software support is just generally rough, yeah it’s good on RPi (and Mac) but on other boards it typically sucks, namely the cheaper boards OP would be buying. Here’s a couple software examples though, I’m a big docker user and just the other day I was trying to run I believe Mastodon and Lemmy on an ARM device but there was just no image for it. I’m sure I could build an image myself but for someone just getting into Homelabbing (like OP), x86 is the platform to use.

        • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          ARM software support is just generally rough, yeah it’s good on RPi (and Mac) but on other boards it typically sucks, namely the cheaper boards OP would be buying.

          Let’s see… Not counting Rock64 which is popular and AARCH, I also have chinese noname Espada E-726 TV Box on Allwinner A10, that(box) nobody knew about. Built bootloader, built kernel, installed system on SD card, it works.

          I’m a big docker user and just the other day I was trying to run I believe Mastodon and Lemmy on an ARM device but there was just no image for it.

          (It’s a GIF)

          I’m sure I could build an image myself but for someone just getting into Homelabbing (like OP), x86 is the platform to use.

          It is easier to not use Docker.

      • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        There is actually lots of OSS that does not support arm. As a popular example documentserver for nextcloud.

            • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              This means you did not compile for correct architecture. There also can happen with program that use hand-written assembly, but I reeeeally doubt nextcloud devs do it.

              For simplicity just compile with -mcpu=native on target computer.

              EDIT: wait a sec, who are you? I doubt you want documentserver too.

              • Sowhatever@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                Nonaligned memory access can occur in C code. I’m not speaking about nextcloud, you mentioned "if you can compile it works (for any architecture) ", which is demonstrably false.

                • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Nonaligned memory access can occur in C code.

                  Entire Cortex A-series should work fine with unaligned memory access to RAM when MMU is enabled(which is always on for linux). With few exceptions, but nextcloud is not a device driver.

                  (for any architecture) ",

                  I never said that.

                  • Sowhatever@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    It was implied in the discussion: “if you can compile it, it will work”.

                    There’s plenty of ARM processors before Cortex. There’s SPARC. And there’s a crapton of others with their quirks.

                    Just because you can compile a program from source, it doesn’t guarantee it will work. As mentioned: online assembly, memory alignment, but you can add endianness or questionable pointer arithmetic, not to mention dynamic runtime code generation. And I’m sure there’s 5 other reasons that I haven’t personally run into.

                    Yeah, in a perfect world everyone would write bug-free, platform-independent code, alas…