I feel like the world is sleeping on ForgeJo — it’s such a capable and easily hostable alternative to gitlab/github/bitbucket.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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It's literally the core foundation of my entire self-hosting configuration. I could not live without Forgejo. I can't imagine being shackled to Github or some other hosted provider anymore for something as important as my git repositories.
Gitea's okay too in every practical respect, but Forgejo is the more community-led fork and in my opinion less likely to be corporatized and enshittified far in the future, so I've hitched my wagon there and couldn't be happier. The fork is starting to diverge slowly, so it seems like direct migration is no longer possible. That said, git repositories are git repositories, and they have most of the important history and stuff inside them already, so unless you're super attached to stuff like issues and whatever you can still migrate, you'll just lose some stuff.
Huge shout-out to Forgejo. It's blazingly fast, even on low resource devices. Throw it on a Raspberry Pi and chuck it in a closet. I betcha it would have better uptime/reliability than GitHub.
I love forgejo!
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Pihole again, Vaultwarden, forgejo, syncthing
Thanks! I thought Syncthing does not use central servers? Whats the benefit of using one?
I'm not PC but, one benefit of using a central server for syncthing is an always on backup that doesn't require another client device to be on, it also allows for easier creation of new shares.
For example, with syncthing you can set the "servers" client device to auto approve/accept any shares that are to trusted devices, then when you get a new device, instead of needing to add that device to every device you share on the syncthing network, you only need to add that device to the server and then you can have your other clients connect to the servers share instead of device to device. It's easier. You can also configure the shares on the server to use encryption by default too, since you don't really ever need to actually see the files on the server since it's basically a install and forget style client.
As an example of what I mean:
I have 10 different devices that run syncthing, 9 clients and a "server" client. these clients are not always on at the same time, and as such when I change a file, the files can become desynced and cause issues with conflicts. By having a centralized server, as long as the server is on(it always is) and client itself is online, it's going to always sync. I don't need to worry about file conflicts between my clients as the server should always have the newest file.
Then for example say my phone died. Instead of needing to readd every seperate client that the phone needs to share with to the new device, I only need to add the phone as a trusted source on the "server" client via the webui -> click share to that device on every share the phone needs, and then remap the shares to the proper directories on the mobile device. this is vs having to add every device to the phone, and the phone to every device it needs access to ontop of reconfiguring all the shares. It's simpler, but fair warning does cause a single point of failure if the server goes offline.
I did not know that. Thanks for explaining!
In addition to what others have said, Syncthing will use public relay servers if it can't make a direct connection between your devices. Everything is encrypted, so it's not unsafe or anything as far as i know, but if you want to run your own private Syncthing relay server, you can. (Or run your own public one)
MeTube, for when my friends send me a video on a service I don't use (facebook, instagram, tiktok). It supports a lot of sites.
What's the flow there? Receive link, copy, open MeTube, paste, download watch?
Tiktok and Instagram links are so frustrating when friends send them.
Yeah, that's about it. You can watch it directly in the browser as well.
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Possibly underrated: CopyParty. Its an entire fileserver in a little over 1 MB. You can host it on anything that runs python and the client can be anything with a browser. It's unbelievably simple and efficient. If I knew self hosting was this easy I would have started sooner.
Radicale - I ditched Nextcloud for it as no-one needed to see a calendar, it's on their phone...
I also use it to sync a calendar for Home Assistant too
And it effectively backs up my Contacts too.
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If you have a need for Calendar or To-dos, Radicale is a nice CalDAV/CardDAV server that's pretty tiny. For me its sitting there at idle using 35MB of RAM.
Small Update:
I set up Radicale as a replacement for EteSync (as it seems development has stalled, and I am paying for the VPS anyway) and so far it works great. Getting a “shared” calendar to work with symlinks was not that intuitive in a Podman setup, but I got it to work. Thanks for the suggestion!
XMPP server (Prosody) that can also act as a Unified Push distributor.
Nice! I think XMPP is the best approach to messaging, as it is decentralized and can be E2E (and more mature than e.g. Matrix). The problem is that I won't be able to convince anyone I know to use XMPP (Signal was a huge struggle already).
For now you can use XMPP with the Slidge Signal gateway. At some point there will be an issue with Signal due to their centralized servers in the US and then you will be happy to not depend on it so much.
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My favorite as well.
I'm thinking about finding an alternative to ntfy. The maintainers are increasingly vibe coding it.
Forgejo, pihole, freshrss, baikal, mealie, wg-easy, searxng
Thanks for the suggestions. Are you happy with the search results and UX of SearxNG?
KOreader Sync if you use KOreader. Easily pick up where you leave off on other devices!
I also run Wiki.js to (inconsistently) document what I'm doing with my apps and server.
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I found https://github.com/TwiN/gatus recently and its been a welcomed alternative to UptimeKuma (I have many hosts I monitor, so having a configuration file makes it far easier).
I run a Prometheus server at work, for doing ICMP latency checks, thats all I need at home. Gatus is super simple for my needs.
ErsatzTV 🫡
Heads up, ersatzTV is no longer being developed.
2nd time I'm hearing about this service today. How's the experience?
Small static websites. You can get surprisingly performant and easily managed websites if you don't actually need the overhead of common frameworks. For instance giving your kid a real domain they can update and show to their friends.
On the slightly more resource intensive side, OpnSense has been a game changer for me.
I’m a big fan of static site generators. For the websites I maintain, switching from WordPress to Hugo reduced my workload a lot.
I set up a workflow using DecapCMS + Hugo + GitHub. Non-technical users can log in via GitHub to edit content on the CMS, and GitHub Actions automatically builds and deploys the site via SFTP.
GitHub is kinda meh, but it’s low-cost and gets the job done.
I'm in the process of switching from ipfire to opnsense myself.
I hate how bloaty opnsense is at first glance but it has so much more control so once I copy my current config I'll be leaving ipfire in the dust.
Nice. Haven't tried IpFire but gonna give it a look. Been on OpnSense for a couple years now and have been enjoying it.
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Favourite? Probably Kavita.
I'm looking to sell Forgejo next myself
I used to use Nextcloud and put files in there instead of Google Drive. That’s ok, but turns out, way more than I need. I use Nephele with the Owlfiles app now. It’s less resource intensive. Also, I can manage actual folders on my server. I have a simlink to my Jellyfin media folder and manage it from there.
glance averages around 20MB of RAM per day on my home server. Others have mentioned syncthing, which is also very light on resources, and super useful.
Grist
I know use spreadsheets for just about everything
I enjoy gotosocial, its such a lightweight fediverse server
Does it work well with Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy etc.? Or do you still have separate accounts there?
It works with most fediverse platforms (its in beta still, but gonna come out of beta soon!) not so much with lemmy as its more so microblogging
Sounds interesting. Thanks!
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