this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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What else should I self-host? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by sbeak@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Today I set up my old laptop as a Debian server, hosting Immich (for photos), Nextcloud (for files), and Radicale (for calendar). It was surprisingly easy to do so after looking at the documentation and watching a couple videos online! Tomorrow I might try hosting something like Linkwarden or Karakeep.

What else should I self-host, aside from HA (I don’t have a smart home), Calibre (physical books are my jam), and Jellyfin (I don’t watch too many movies + don’t have a significant DVD/Blu-ray collection)?

I would like to keep my laptop confined to my local network since I don’t trust it to be secure enough against the internet.

edit: I forgot, I’m also hosting Tailscale so I can access my local network remotely!

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[–] kristoff 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I run a small setup on a seperate server segment (2nd router behind my main router) so it is on the internet. I run nextcloud, an dendrite and conduit instance (matrix chat-server servers), a mastodon and go-to-social instance (fediverse), bitwarden (password manager), and others.

If there is a service that you do not want to be publically accessable by everybody but you do want to access from everywhere on the internet yourself, check out client-side TLS (https) certificates. The server does is accessable from the internet put only people who have a TLS certificate on their client signed by you can access it. For services that do not require incoming connections from other machines (e.g. nextcloud, bitwarden, ... but no federated services like matrix-chat or the fediverse) that is a very good option to protect your servers.

[–] themakara@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
  • Paperless if you want to keep your digital documents organized.
  • Jellyfin/Navidrome for music streaming if you have a collection.
  • AudiobookShelf for streaming & tracking progress of audoobooks if you have a collection.
  • Kitchenowl for organizing your household (expenses, shopping lists, recipes, planning meals)
  • FreshRSS for RSS-Feeds (News, Blogs etc)
  • LinkDing for Bookmark Management
  • Game-Servers (like Minecraft or others)

EDIT:Added Linkding & GameServers

[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 4 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Are you using Kitchenowl for storing recipes? If so, what's your experience with it?

I've tried Tandoor, the common suggestion for recipe management, but I've found it too clunky to add recipes to. I like the concept, but it would take a long time to move all my recipes into the specific format they use, and the web UI does not make things easier.

[–] Provolone@lemmy.zip 5 points 19 hours ago

Worth checking out Mealie, too. Can't say how it compares to Tandoor or Kitchenowl but I've been happy with Mealie for years now.

[–] themakara@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

My experience with the function is limited, but I think it's decent. Markdown support, import from websites etc. If you add the items to the recipe with their amounts and then write them out in the text it automatically give you the amount you need based on the portions specified.

On app.kitchenowl.org you can create a demo-user and household. Within that, you can try the recipe function. Sign up requires a mail-address, but it does not need to be a valid one.

[–] toketin@feddit.it 3 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Firefly III in order to track your expenses

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

In my experience, firefly is not aimed at household or personal finance. It is very obviously made by and for accountants.

Actual Budget is much more approachable for the normal home user, and very similar to the successful YNAB.

[–] Provolone@lemmy.zip 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Actual Budget if you're more into envelope budgeting. I came from YNAB and could not get the same workflow out of Firefly as I could YNAB. Actual Budget does provide that.

I do think setting up HTTPS is required for Actual so if you don't have that yet, then Firefly is the way to go.

[–] toketin@feddit.it 1 points 16 hours ago

Hi, I've tried Actual Budget but I've found more interesting in terms of options Firefly, so I've chosen for it :)

[–] DownByLaw@sh.itjust.works 47 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Just from the top of my head:

Edit: I left out some stuff that you or others already mentioned. But here’s the extended list so I can copy/paste this if someone else asks in the future.

Honorable mention:

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[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I want to add dockge, for making it easy to manage / update your docker containers.

https://github.com/louislam/dockge

Love it. Saves me lots of time.

[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 2 points 18 hours ago

If you don't want a GUI, dockcheck is an easy way to update many containers at once from the CLI.

[–] excess0680@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

You may or may not be a developer, but I would like to vote for Gitea/Forgejo. Should you ever get a grasp of git, a git forge is great for keeping code and even plain text documents recorded. It’s my favorite self-hosted service by far.

It can even operate as an OIDC server, so you can create a single login for all your services (that support OIDC).

I’ll also recommend Grist, an alternative to Google Sheets (and Notion, I believe?). It’s a web interface to spreadsheets that supports Python code as formulas. (I’ve also tried Nocodb, another Notion alternative, and I much prefer Grist.)

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am, indeed, a developer. I might try locally hosting Gitea/Forgejo as an extra backup. I assume you can have multiple “origins” in git, right? That means I can back my repository to both codeberg and server.

Grist seems pretty cool too.

[–] excess0680@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Absolutely! I have used multiple origins for posting my projects to Gitea/Forgejo and GitHub. You can also mirror repositories from one site to another, too, although it requires a clean slate for pulling from another remote.

The biggest use case for me is documenting (as code) my home network setup on my private forge.

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[–] EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Host a pangolin reverse proxy on a free oracle cloud VPS! It's super nice to redirect online traffic to a LAN resource, that way you can share your home lab with friends and family without having to forward any ports or loosen your security posture.

https://blog.thetechcorner.sk/posts/Connect-to-your-homelab-over-CGNAT-with-tunnels-homelab-2-0/

I also highly recommend this suite of tools for downloading and streaming legal media via torrent because I would never endorse piracy.

https://github.com/TechHutTV/homelab/tree/main/media

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

From what I have seen, oracle is not a good host. They randomly delete servers for no reason. I’d steer clear of oracle

[–] EpicFailGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I don't trust oracle at all. The guide uses them because they're free (It includes a business generator so that oracle doesn't reclaim your box)

I personaly went with IONOS because they have a 2.99 plan with unlimited bandwidth which is great for pangolin as that's routing traffic for my "media" box

[–] 3dcadmin@lemmy.relayeasy.com 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That's because they are free. You really do get what you paid for - or not in this case. It's in the t&c's too

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 19 hours ago

I know. I'm just saying, don't use them if you don't want ot constantly reinstall your server

[–] vane@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

searchxng, libretranslate

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

It’s searxng but yes. That is a good suggestion.

[–] elvith@feddit.org 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

As you mentioned Immich, Nextcloud and Radicale - don't forget to make regular backups. If you haven't automated them, that's your next project now ;)

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

How do I set up backups for Immich, Nextcloud, and Radicale? I see lots of different options, I can't pick!

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

that seems quite important, I’ll do that then!

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

And don't think that you can just back up using a file-copy process. These things have databases that also need to be backed up. It's not as simple as it first seems.

Source: been selfhosting for an embarrassingly long time without any backup!

[–] elvith@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

Just a quick add on: not only do and automate backups - do also test them every now and then.

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[–] ryan_harg@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

can I ask what is the advantage of radicale over nextcloud calendar sync?

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

I hosted radicale first so already had my events sorted out. Wasn’t really bothered moving them again. Also, I like radicale, it’s simple and it works.

[–] suzune@ani.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm thinking about moving my Nextcloud calendars and addressbooks to Baikal. Why? Because I like one "tool for one thing" better than "one tool for everything".

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[–] NaibofTabr 18 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Actual Budget is an open-source envelope-style budgeting tool similar to YNAB. It has a self-hostable syncing service so that you can manage your budget across multiple devices.

The reason you might want to do this is that it's probably easier to do full account review sitting at your computer, but you might want to track expenses/receipts on your smartphone while you're away from home.

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[–] ragingHungryPanda@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

What about AdGuard home, set your router to use your server as a DNS and get local network dns with adblocking?

[–] lanky_ginger@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

Maybe Pihole/Adguard home?

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Why Radicale when you have a caldav-capable calendar in NC?

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago

I hosted Radicale first, so already had my calendar events and such set.

[–] a_fancy_kiwi@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Paperless-ngx - it allows you to upload important documents like receipts, contracts, etc. and uses OCR so you can search them

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