A home server is a separate machine from your main computer. It may not be connected to a monitor, or it may be a used laptop no one sits at. But it lives on yo

A home server is a separate machine from your main computer. It may not be connected to a monitor, or it may be a used laptop no one sits at. But it lives on your network at home. A server provides software services. Your router could be considered a server: it helps your wifi devices get online and manages the Internet connection. Tipi is an example of a pre-configured router, but as a server for certain apps: by using it, you don't have to set it up yourself. It comes with software that you can use, already available, installed, and configured. But it is a server too--and running in your home, it is a "homeserver." You could likely use those same apps without Tipi, with varying amounts of time spent configuring something similar. > Also is there a difference between a homeserver and localhost? Yes, it would be different. If Tipi is running on a separate machine (the server), its localhost may load some kind of web control panel. However, when you visit localhost on your personal machine, if a web server is not running, the browser may just load an error page. See this nearby comment for some advantages of running your own server(s) at home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794629