EDIT: Holy shit, was not expecting so much support for my inquiry. Thank you all for the bevy of ideas and solutions. I think Iām still gonna go for the Intel 12th Gen+ NUC style, although some of your setups seriously made me quite jelly. Maybe Iāll get there one of these days. Iāll update this when I finally lock down my purchase :)
Hey all, lurker for a bit, but just joined because Iāve started my journey of self hosting the simple stuff (or at least I hope itās simple). For the past couple years Iāve been using a RPi Zero W for PiHole, and more recently go into Jellyfin and Home Assistant, using an RPi4 and an RPi3+ respectively. Iāve also got a hand-me-down Synology ds214j NAS with 2x8TB in RAID0 RAID1, which is about half full atm. Iām not expecting to expand that storage anytime soon, so Iāve pivoted to an attempt at combining the 3 Pis above into one NUC/SFF/etc device with a roughly similar power draw. Also looking at re-jumping back into 3D printing using OctoPrint.
Iāve looked briefly at jumping to a Pi5, but that led me down the rabbit hole with Jeff Geerlingās article/video on Pi vs. NUC. Iāve continued to putter around looking at NUCs in the ~$200 range. Hoping to stick with MinisForum, GMKTek, or Beelink if possible, but only becauseā¦ itās all I know. Iād like to also tinker deeper with Linux flavors, as Iām a noob at best with it but want to at least have some growing knowledge, as Iāve primarily been a Windows gamer and use Apple at the office almost exclusively. Iād like to try staying with AMD as Iāve slowly moved over from the ādark sideā (donāt hurt me) that is Intel and Nvidia.
Last nugget is that Iāve never tinkered with Docker, as it seems that may be the best route to host all these apps on one contiguous installation. Iāve new-ish to VMs too, so anything āBabyās First VMā would be nice.
I know I made a giant pile of wants/needs, so if thereās no magical unicorn, Iām cool with other ideas. Thanks in advance, and Iām really keen on seeing what options I have.
Oh donāt get me wrong, I get burnout myself if Iām hovering on a hobby for too long, but tinkering is in my blood. Iām sure Iāll have moments where Iām just thinking, āFuck it, Imma play some gaems instead.ā, but that itch is bound to come back.
I am curious what VPN you use tho. Been shopping around, and the unfortunate news that the big services are owned by a particular company kinda stalled my research.
We appear to have a similar affliction. Iām let down terribly by a lack of expertise, and so take a best alternative in most cases. My VPN is Mullvad. Iām due renewal in the next 2 months so will be pondering simple renewal vs switching to ProtonVPN. The purity of Mullvad privacy is wasted on me as the only real difference appears to be the option to pay by bitcoin or cash. Proton appears to have more options and less likely to be blocked if you go away on holiday etc.