this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Fun/interesting things to self host? (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by halloween_spookster@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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What things do you self host (or know about) that are fun/interesting/useful to you? I'm thinking of setting up a home server and am looking for things that would be useful or fun for me to run on it. I want to host things that are useful/fun, but not a project itself (I've got enough projects), if that makes sense.

Most of the lists I see online are mostly lists of technical projects like docker, kubernetes, grafana, nginx, etc. I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself. ETA: the infra is important, but not "interesting" in this context as I deal with infra at my day job.

Examples of the type of service I'm looking at: a media server, photos app (to replace Google Photos), game servers, recipe management, home automation... What other things do you know about that are fun/interesting/useful?

Edit: thank you everyone for your awesome responses!

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself.

Well, you kind of have to have the infrastructure to make the fun happen. Docker is probably one of the more easy to deploy from the standpoint of someone just standing up a server.

  • media server: Navidrome is what I use, but there are a plethora of choices
  • photos app: Immich is quite popular, but again there are a list of them
  • game servers: There are several that I know of like Doom , Minecraft, iirc there is a Quake server, I think you can integrate Steam. I can't run games because of a seizure condition, but maybe others can chime in.
  • home automation: HomeAssistant, NodeRed, N8N, Ansible, just literally tons of automation

These and thousands of other apps can be deployed via Docker. You don't have to use docker, you can install on bare metal as well, tho containers make things neat and tidy.

As far as 'fun', to me it's all fun. I selfhost for the utility, privacy, security, and anonymity of it, the educational part of it, and because it's fun. My version of fun is going to vary widely from yours probably, but I find learning quite fun. Sky's the limit pretty much.