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I am curious what are some good enough cheapskate self-hosting setups? I want to self-host one of those floss Pocket replacements but I don't want to pay more

I am curious what are some good enough cheapskate self-hosting setups? I want to self-host one of those floss Pocket replacements but I don't want to pay more than what these projects charge for hosting the software themselves (~$5). I am also considering self-hosting n8n. I don't have any sophisticated requirements. If it was possible I would host it from my phone with a backup to Google Drive.

redrove 1y ago
I would look up intel N100 mini PCs. Extremely low power and fast enough (it’s even got hardware decoding).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- demaga 1y ago
  I built a NAS with N100 and am pretty happy with it. Price to performance is really good. It runs several services, no issues yet
  - redrove 1y ago
    Which board did you get?
    - demaga 1y ago
      ASUS PRIME N100I-D D4; put 16 GB of RAM in there, but that was probably an overkill
qmr 1y ago
Used NUCs, Raspberry Pi / pi zero. Any old PC with low idle power draw.
solraph 1y ago
Any of the 1L PCs from Dell, HP, or Lenovo. They sip power (5~10 watts), and take up minimal space. I've got a 6 or 7 VMs running on one, and it barely breaks 5% CPU usage. See https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/ https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic... for a good list of reviews.
- abeindoria 1y ago
  Seconded. A dell optiplex micro or hp pro desk with 7th Gen or 8th Gen i5 is approx $40-55 on eBay if you look. Works flawlessly.
  - mirdaki 1y ago
    Agree. If low cost and maximum value is you're goal, grab a used one of these or similar speed laptop (and you sort of get battery back up in that case) Really, any machine from the last decade will be enough, so if you or someone you know have something lying around, go use that The two main points to keep in mind are power draw (older things are usually going to be worse here) and storage expandability options (you may not need much storage for your use case though). Worse case you can plug in a USB external drive, but bare in mind that USB connection might be a little flaky
- microtonal 1y ago
  This, when I was a student and had to live frugal (2001-2008 or so), I got a second-hand Dell, put it on top of a high cupboard in my dorm room, and installed a bunch of services (e.g. Trac was very popular in the day for hosting projects). It won't give you 99.999% uptime, but for that stage in my life it was just stellar. I even had an open source project (Slackware fork) where I collaborated with someone else through that little machine. Second-hand hardware is also a great way to get high-quality enterprise hardware. E.g. during the same time period I had a Dell workstation with two Xeon CPUs (not multi-core, my first SMP machine) and Rambus DRAM (very expensive, but the seller maxed it out).
pedro_caetano 1y ago
As a former firefox pocket user, what are the replacements? I've looked into Wallabag but perhaps there are more I don't know?
- b0dhimind 1y ago
  Wallabag seems to be the best especially since its KOReader compatible. I still haven't migrated though to self-host the server...
- netrix 1y ago
  https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep It's nice, has an Android app, auto tagging if connected to LLM (local Ollama works too)
poulpy123 1y ago
I'm personally happy with my mini-pc+tailscale which is quite cheap, although if it's just for one service and $5/month I don't think it's worthwhile
mbs159 1y ago
You can use any ~2010 or newer laptop and install Proxmox on it. Voila, you have a server with low energy consumption.

redrove 1y ago

I would look up intel N100 mini PCs. Extremely low power and fast enough (it’s even got hardware decoding).

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
demaga 1y ago
I built a NAS with N100 and am pretty happy with it. Price to performance is really good. It runs several services, no issues yet
- redrove 1y ago
  Which board did you get?
  - demaga 1y ago
    ASUS PRIME N100I-D D4; put 16 GB of RAM in there, but that was probably an overkill

qmr 1y ago

Used NUCs, Raspberry Pi / pi zero. Any old PC with low idle power draw.

solraph 1y ago

Any of the 1L PCs from Dell, HP, or Lenovo. They sip power (5~10 watts), and take up minimal space. I've got a 6 or 7 VMs running on one, and it barely breaks 5% CPU usage. See https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/ https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic... for a good list of reviews.

abeindoria 1y ago
Seconded. A dell optiplex micro or hp pro desk with 7th Gen or 8th Gen i5 is approx $40-55 on eBay if you look. Works flawlessly.
- mirdaki 1y ago
  Agree. If low cost and maximum value is you're goal, grab a used one of these or similar speed laptop (and you sort of get battery back up in that case) Really, any machine from the last decade will be enough, so if you or someone you know have something lying around, go use that The two main points to keep in mind are power draw (older things are usually going to be worse here) and storage expandability options (you may not need much storage for your use case though). Worse case you can plug in a USB external drive, but bare in mind that USB connection might be a little flaky
microtonal 1y ago
This, when I was a student and had to live frugal (2001-2008 or so), I got a second-hand Dell, put it on top of a high cupboard in my dorm room, and installed a bunch of services (e.g. Trac was very popular in the day for hosting projects). It won't give you 99.999% uptime, but for that stage in my life it was just stellar. I even had an open source project (Slackware fork) where I collaborated with someone else through that little machine. Second-hand hardware is also a great way to get high-quality enterprise hardware. E.g. during the same time period I had a Dell workstation with two Xeon CPUs (not multi-core, my first SMP machine) and Rambus DRAM (very expensive, but the seller maxed it out).

pedro_caetano 1y ago

As a former firefox pocket user, what are the replacements? I've looked into Wallabag but perhaps there are more I don't know?

b0dhimind 1y ago
Wallabag seems to be the best especially since its KOReader compatible. I still haven't migrated though to self-host the server...
netrix 1y ago
https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep It's nice, has an Android app, auto tagging if connected to LLM (local Ollama works too)

poulpy123 1y ago

I'm personally happy with my mini-pc+tailscale which is quite cheap, although if it's just for one service and $5/month I don't think it's worthwhile

mbs159 1y ago

You can use any ~2010 or newer laptop and install Proxmox on it. Voila, you have a server with low energy consumption.