what internship are you doing?
I just use flash drives to transfer stuff from my computer to the ipad so i can watch in bed lol, keep my music on an mp3 player
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
730 points (97.2% liked)
Linux
14563 readers
716 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Surprisingly those dual-ended USB-A + USB-C flash drives can be pretty decent, especially for stuff like this.
it's easier to wait like 5 minutes for files to transfer than to maintain a whole wireless streaming setup. i think of it like walking over to the video rental store lol
load more comments
(1 replies)
i uhh yeah host abt 10 containers on an i7 laptop currently. in my small office (kids bedroom) closet. I do also have a 3tb storage available but its what I had … an external wd drive. sigh. i am nbr 3 huh?
I'm in stage 2
Me too but now I'm afraid
I’m also in stage 2 but getting closer to stage 3 😂
Same, been there for a decade.
I'm careful about what I want to host because I know I'm the asshole that needs to fix it when it breaks, and password managers that my wife uses are 100% off the self-hosted menu.
Vaultwarden requires Bitwarden to keep on allowing client access. Even if there are FOSS plugins/clients, I still need ot host it between my house and a cloud and it needs to be highly available.
I'll keep paying for that one.
How about a basic ass keepass file that you put on your Nextcloud? I've been using that for years and I'm happy with that
load more comments
(2 replies)
Same here for pretty much the same reasons
Stage 2 is ideal. Normie self hosting. Once you figure out docker youre cooked in the pipeline
With this sort of thing, I'm always left wondering what I'm missing in terms of the hardware. Like, I've been collecting bits and bobs of old hardware for years, but it feels like if I want anything more than an absolutely basic raspberry-pi-level server, I need to buy dedicated hardware. For example, I want to put together a nas, especially since I do have a collection of spare, old hard drives, but would want raid for that. Unfortunately, its rare to find a mobo that has more than four sata ports, and all the power supplies I have available to harvest from other systems are either too weak, or are proprietary, meaning I'm halfway to buying a new PC anyway. Is there something I'm missing, or do others just have more disposable income?
You can get an PCIe HBA on ebay for $50-60 bucks and will allow you to connect 8 disks to a single system. Look for ones that specifically say they have been flashed to IT mode which will let the host system address the individual drives and enable you to use MDADM for RAID. My "Server" is literally just the old motherboard from my gaming PC with 4x 8TB drives connected to one of those ebay HBAs.
load more comments
(1 replies)
My Nextcloud runs on a basic ass raspberry pi and uses a USB hardware RAID. It fulfills all my NAS needs.
You dont have 11 leftover/trash computers/laptops/harddrives your family dumped on you? Im 26 and ive been given legitimately 16 different computers from my mom, dad, grandparents, and in-laws
Where do you think all the aforementioned hard drives came from? Lol. Its just that so many of the other parts are proprietary/old that I can't mix-and-match to make something more useful. For a breif period, I had four separate working desktops, and not one had a standard power supply or mobo. I swear all of that should be made illegal.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I bought a second hand Intel NUC and put a big harddrive in it (I think only.some models have a slot). Works pretty good.
To piggyback off of OR3X's comment, I purchased a LSI 9300-16I for my Plex server which will support 16 data/SAS drives with the 4 way cables. They make a 8I version as well that's cheaper. Power is still something you have to work out though, but that's a single PSU.
I purchased my unit on eBay for $53 a couple years back. I use unRAID to host everything and would recommend because it's fairly simple to setup, and works very well with mixed disks and parity. I've had 5+ old drives fail over the past few years and never lost any data.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'm definitely stage 3 but it's still an enjoyable hobby that isn't that time-consuming. I think stage 4 is creating your own services and spamming social media in search of users.
I’m worried I don’t know if I’m 2 or 3
Level 4 would be using some sort of off-grid decentralized networking instead of the internet?
load more comments
(2 replies)
Nonsense! The old laptop I run proxmox, home assistant, and most of my containers on is mounted to the wall in the garage, not under the stairs.
I’m trying to figure out where to put my server, currently it’s on my desk. I want to avoid the garage because of exhaust/dirt/temperature swings. The understair closet is next to the shower, so humidity could be a concern, and also it’s a small awkward shaped space. I would prefer to set it up in the utility room, but there’s humidity and dust from the dryer and washer. Maybe I’m just being too precious though
load more comments
(2 replies)
Laptops have an integrated UPS!
Tried that for a while. The battery turned into a spicy pillow and nearly broke the keyboard from how much it puffed out.
If you do that, make sure the laptop has a feature to keep the battery from charging to 100% at all times. UPSs with lead acid batteries handle sitting at 100% much better.
Alternatively, you can remove the battery and have the laptop plugged into a charger 24/7. I did that a while ago for my laptop server and it's been working great. I need to watch to not move the carpet it stands on (on a separate stand) too much since the connection is a little flimsy, but I've not had to deal with random shutdowns because of that at all yet.
Stage 3
I left all of that shit behind and now just use VLC to stream to any pc on my network from a shared drive.
I use a NAS for backup and I am always concerned about the backup being in the same physical location as the primary. I still haven't figured out the best way to resolve that.
One encrypted backup to the cloud or trade space with a friend.
When I replaced my first NAS I moved the original to a family member’s basement and run a nightly job to sync what I don’t want to lose between the two.
rsync.net, borg, rclone.
Or get an s3 bucket on AWS, linode, digital ocean and dump things there.
load more comments
(2 replies)
For me it goes from interested in alternatives, to uber into hosting as much you can, down to the essentials.