If you can overcome the first kinda large step of setting up a basic install of Proxmox + ZFS pool, you’ll love it. You can try shit out and nuke it if you don’t like it. Helper Scripts from here are also a great way to try stuff without breaking anything you already have. each container gets its own IP so you don’t have to juggle stuff with a reverse proxy (which is a PITA to set up properly) and with TailScale on the host, you can pretty much access everything from anywhere, without exposing it to the wider internet.

Creating a ZFS pool is also rather nice, because you can keep adding new disks to the pool when you’re running short. Ideally you’d use some mirroring for security. Backups are also nice with proxmox, as long as you don’t give every LXC a giant size quota.

Last thing, DO get an UPS, even if it’s a small consumer grade one that lasts 5 minutes. Make sure it has some sort of conectivity (network or USB) and it’s linux compatible. I’ve lost a lot of time rebuilding a 2yo NextCloud install that went all wonky after a blackout.

So in a detailed summary from your points:

1. Proxmox makes it easy to make, test and restore backups, even if it’s for a spare drive or across the network. Setting up a /mnt/usb mountpoint for an external USB drive by UUID is one way of having it available when needed, and kept offline for safekeeping
2. Frigate NVR. Lightweight, can integrate with HomeAssistant for automations and alerts. Try getting “dumb” IP cameras, most of the smart IoT stuff will try to upsell you on crap and might end up bricked by the company down the line.
3. Nextcloud for your PC backups and Immich for your phone photos. NC also has an android and iOS app that can sync folders you tell it to.
4. Look up “YAMS”. I’d recommend running the whole YAMS stack + portainer on a separate Proxmox LXC so you can easily put the whole thing on a separate VPN instead of relying on the provided gluetun package
5. For quick One-offs, portainer is more than enough. There’s Pterodactyl and Pelican for more in-depth server hosting but I found it too cumbersome
6. PiHole LXC on a fixed IP and set your devices (or better yet, your router/AP if you can) pointing to it’s IP as the primary DNS server
7. not really sure what you mean here, wired connections tend to be the best, maybe get a Pi or a small android box that supports ethernet.
8. HomeAssistant (use the VM helper script for full HAOS!)
9. HomeAssistant again, try getting a smart meter that doesn’t rely on shitty APIs like Tuya, unless you’re willing to dive into hacking with tasmota.
10. ProxmoxLXC, there’s already a helper script for it.
11. Kiwix-server has a docker image, easily hostable and it takes Wikipedia’s offline archive files.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Good luck!

I will probably get flogged by this answer but here it goes:

I’d throw you right into the deep end: get a spare machine (an old laptop or PC) and install proxmox on it. Play around, breaks shit, delete the container/VM and start over.

Grab stuff from the Community Helper Scripts and see new stuff, try alternatives, see what works for you and don’t be afraid of breaking stuff.

It takes a bit longer and some basic concepts might fly over your head, but the stuff you learn like this, you learn by heart.

It’s been a few years since I started tinkering with a laptop with a busted video output circuit. Now I serve NextCloud and Immich to my family, keep receipts and documents neatly organised on Paperless, have a decent arr stack and a bunch of extra goodies. All from “a PC without video? Might as well make a server” now with a proper machine with several drives on ZFS pools, health checks and redundancy.

Its a helluva rabbit hole.

If you already have HomeAssistant

https://github.com/ad-ha/kidschores-ha

I loved the idea behind Funkwhale but damn it was such q a chore to set up I ended up spinning up 4 navidrome instances lol

No joke here, try (internet) radio. You’ll discover stuff you’d never get on algo-based recommendations. I might be biased by growing up with Winamp’s shoutcast

Recently had to help a relative who still uses windows, so here’s a freebie from Linux:

You can use super + number to launch any pinned program on the taskbar. For example let’s say you have your browser right of the start button and file explorer on the next spot right, pressing super+1 launches the browser and super+2 the explorer

Edit: super = windows logo key

Thats what Felix said, im personally a fan of OrganicMaps

Articles too much time too, so I made you this

• Google bad, tracking sucks
• Android -> graphene
• Keep -> joplin
• Docs -> nextcloud
• Gmail -> proton
• GMaps -> car GPS
• Tailscale
• Selfhosted on SteamDeck

Tried OCIS a while back and its way faster than NC syncing files, even the initial sync was so fast I didn’t trust it was fully done (but it was).

That being said, OCIS is missing several key features I daily use: namely proper DAV support (contacts, calendar, todo, journal, etc) as well as integrations for stuff like SeedVault for mobile backups.

Oh no, don’t take it as “don’t reinvent the wheel”! I meant it in the true sense that sometimes we spent so much effort and focus building something, just to post about it somewhere and getting a reply “Oh nice, it’s exactly like X project!”.

Currently I’m running NextCloud on prem, so DavX5 and JTXBoard cover most of my note taking and todo tasks, and I guess one could deploy the server-side encryption module on a NextCloud AIO on a VPS and keep everything (probably) safe and private. I’m kinda lazy too, that’s why I liked the hands-off maintenance of NC-AIO. I get notifications to update stuff, and I get regular security audits from NC itself.

BTW, never take that “doing stuff already done” is in detriment of helping FOSS projects. There are tons of examples of people randomly tinkering around and accidentally finding some huge fix for other projects. Off the top of my head, some weeb wanted to play Nier Automata at decent framerates on wine and a few years later, here we are with DXVK and all the proton stuff making most stuff playable!

Really interested on seeing this, although if I could make a suggestion, start by scouting around and see if you can adapt FOSS apps, maybe fork them and add/remove features to please your objectives and tastes.

Although I’m eager to see these through, I like projects like murena (/e/OS) that cobble together good Foss projects into a single cohesive ecosystem (without making the word ecosystem gross and vendor locked in like in most cases)

Unless the crook happens to be extremely nerdy or its law enforcement, already being a Linux formatted partition feels it should be enough for a rando breaking in and stealing a computer.

That being said, something like a PiKVM connected to your server (and Tailscale) could let you enable both UEFI/boot password and propt for LUKS decryption upon boot.

Cool! Thanks for the tip!

Try duckdns, it doesnt nag you every month and it just works

Indeed, tailscale/wireguard/zerotier are excellent options to keep only the bare minimum (or even nothing!) exposed to the world.

I just checked and at least on LineageOS 21 (android 14) you indeed can add specific apps (and notification categories, eg calls) to bypass do not disturb

Maybe a bit of a low tech solution, but I have an older RPI 3B running a second instance of PiHole.

No idea if its better, its the thing I tried and it was pretty seamless to set up. With my aging hardware and AMD GPU, I have been pretty much sitting in the sidelines with this whole LLM thing

There’s a dockerized version if you need those

https://github.com/Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm/blob/master/docker/HOW_TO_USE_DOCKER.md