this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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Your favourite piece of selfhosting - Part 1 - Operating System (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 10 months ago by theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello everyone,

I am about to renovate my selfhosting setup (software wise). And then thought about how I could help my favourite lemmy community become more active. Since I am still learning many things and am far away from being a sysadmin I don't (just) want tell my point of view but thought about a series of posts:

Your favourite piece of selfhosting

I thought about asking everyone of you for your favourite piece of software for a specific use case. But we have to start at the bottom:

Operating systems and/or type 1 hypervisors

You don't have to be an expert or a professional. You don't even have to be using it. Tell us about your thoughts about one piece of software. Why would you want to try it out? Did you try it out already? What worked great? What didn't? Where are you stuck right now? What are your next steps? Why do you think it is the best tool for this job? Is it aimed at beginners or veterans?

I am eager to hear about your thoughts and stories in the comments!

And please also give me feedback to this idea in general.

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[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I'm new to all this.

Synology: I was using Synology before and getting started with trying some Docker containers. The Synology was very underpowered and containers kept crashing or being shut down (from resources running out I guess) so I wanted to upgrade.

Comments seemed to suggest it is best to keep the Synology as purely a NAS and use a mini PC for compute, so that's what I went for. Got a 12th Gen Intel mini PC pretty cheap on eBay to play around with.

Debian - I've put Debian with KDE on the mini PC server. I was looking into TrueNAS or Unraid to consist what I should try learning. My brother (rightly) said there's no reason to over complicate things when I don't need functions of those OS and don't understand them. The one place the Linux community seems to be united is in recommending Debian for a server for being rock solid and stable. I've been very happy with it.

Spent my week off figuring out Docker, mounting NAS drives on the server PC, troubleshooting the problems. Got a setup I'm really happy with and I'm really happy I went with Debian.

[–] credics@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have pretty much the same setup. Works like a charm.

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What are you running on your server? I'm looking for more ideas.

I've got loads of stuff up and running, but now it is all quietly functional and I'm withdrawing from the enjoyment if setting up something new. I've recently had to delete a couple of Docker apps which weren't really very useful for me, but I enjoyed setting them up and liked seeing a long list of healthy containers in Dockge.

[–] credics@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Immich, paperless, Bitwarden, and a static website with recipes. I am very happy with all of them. Next projects are Forgejo, obsidian live sync (via CouchDB) and a budgeting software (not decided yet)

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 2 points 10 months ago

Notes app is a good idea. I might have a look at options.

Actual is working really well for me for budgeting.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Debian - I've put Debian with KDE on the mini PC server.

Save your resources on the mini pc by getting rid of KDE, desktops can take quite a lot of resources to run!

If you aren’t familiar with the BASH shell it’s essentially the heart of every Linux/GNU based operating systems, no need for a clunky GUi on a server.

Key commands:

  • cd == Change Directory

  • sudo == Root privileges

  • mkdir == Make directory

  • rm -f == Remove file/directory with force

  • touch == Make a new file

  • nano == Text/File editor

  • cat == Read file contents and print to shell

Commands don’t need to be complicated! For example nano /home/SomeUser/Downloads/SomeRandom.txt will open the text editor to SomeRandom.txt in the /Downloads directory of SomeUser

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Thanks. I do know almost all those commands, but I'm not quite comfortable with using konsole/SSH exclusively yet. KDE is what I'm most familiar with from my desktop PC and I thought it would be easier to set up knowing where settings etc are. Also I use a Guacamole Docker app to access the server's desktop (my personal machine) when I need to do some personal task while at work. That may change as I get better at this and learn more.

Edit: I don't want to mess with the server now, but I'll try to put LXQT at some point to save some resources. I don't trust myself to remove KDE cleanly and install a different a different DE without destroying the setup.