Selfhosted

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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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When building a home server, could a used/cheap PC do the job? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've never done any sort of home networking or self-hosting of any kind but thanks to Jellyfin and Mastodon I've become interested in the idea. As I understand it, physical servers ("bare metal" correct?) are PCs intended for data storing and hosting services instead of being used as a daily driver like my desktop. From my (admittedly) limited research, dedicated servers are a bit expensive. However, it seems that you can convert an old PC and even laptop into a server (examples here and here). But should I use that or are there dedicated servers at "affordable" price points. Since is this is first experience with self-hosting, which would be a better route to take?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Old PC's and especially laptops (make sure to consider removing the battery though) make great homeservers. You can run dozens of services on old hardware.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

Leave the battery in and you have a free UPS. Perhaps set it capped at 80% charge to increase its lifespan.