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)
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.
What you are after is basically a server. Your next logical step if Pi is not enough - Intel NUC.
intel is out of the nuc business.
Another option is the Dell Optiplex micro. It’s got a Core processor and is about the size of a couple Bluray cases stacked on top of each other. I believe they run about 10-15W under a light load too.
I’m a big fan of dell wyse machines. Loads on ebay, ex business machines. X86 so decent support, decent dell power supply, on / off button / in cases and low power.
I have wyse 3040 for pihole cost 39.99
I have wyse 5070 with windows 10 for plex and running a Ubuntu 22 server in virtual box, cost 59.99
Go on eBay and look for “tiny” or USFF boxes. Dell, HP, and Lenovo make various models of 1L units that are commonly available. Just make sure to do some research on what the specific hardware capabilities are to make sure they satisfy your needs.
Source: my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web NAS Network-Attached Storage NAT Network Address Translation NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage nginx Popular HTTP server
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A used NUC blows a raspi out of the water performance-wise, and they use surprisingly little power when not under load. I run proxmox with a NAS, pihole and homeassistant on a NUC from 2015, and it draws around 9W.
OrangePi is pretty nice. Built in 8gb eMMC module is a huge performance boost. Only $60 with case and PSU.
Compact business desktops like others have mentioned are great. Depending on your needs, I also like using older or used laptops. They’re still power efficient if you get a recent processor model, people sell them for fairly cheap used, and sometimes having an attached keyboard and display is more convenient than having to hook up a crash cart
Are they cheap though? Maybe in the grand scheme of things.
Like $200 for one Thinkpad versus five raspberry pis.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Raspberry Pi for $40, the demand still has prices sky-high