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Not all programs allow usage of multiple gpus as far as I know, some are not capable of splitting the llm in multiple vrams or something

Idk, the only thing that changed over the last few hundred years is the scale in which things happen. Covid was a world wide thing while the black plaque was "only" Europe.

Wars a few hundred years back were also a lot more localized I think, now they are a pretty global thing. Same with news, back in the day Idk if we would know about wars not in our percoevable range.

And looking back, things always kind if worked out. Personally I am tired that the human species does not seem to evolve beyond our tiny fragile ego and that annoys the heck out of me

As everyone recommends something else, I will throw in yet another suggestion and maybe a way to put it in perspective.

hardware:

What ever you have right now is enough. I would recommend something that has more than one drive, but you can upgrade lager all the time. Watch out for power consumption.

OS

my recommendation is proxmox. You can run multiple OS on it, test things, make backups and restore them. It takes out the pressure. It is a bit more advanced but you can configure most things regarding VM creation via GUI. You can run Ubuntu, Debian, nixos, whatever. What I like about it, is that you can install home assistant as its own VM and it runs independent of your are stack or immich if you like.

the purist would probably suggest plain Debian or so. You can access it via ssh and install docker or whatever. You will learn a lot, just like with proxmox, but here you can't do backups as easily as with proxmox. You can also install Debian or so directly in proxmox.

plug and play could be yunohost, CasaOS and things like that. It is an "server app store OS", so you install things you want to run from their app store. Its mostly one click and it runs. Its nice if you don't want to learn all that crap, but you are also limited in what you can do. You could install this on proxmox. Some don't allow good storage management, best you'd o your own research if you are interested in this route.

the storage

If you want to store all you data and images on there, you propably want to go with 2 hdds mirrored, so you don't loose your local data if one fails. I would go with no less than, 1tb, but data usage depends I guess. To run the os, definetly use ssd or nvme for their speed.

There is the 321 backup rule.

• 3 copies
• 2 different media (hdd, ssd, magnetic tape, whatever)
• 1 offsite storage.

I have a 4 1 1.5 set up:

• mirrored local storage
• 1 media (hdds)
• 1.5 offsite ad I have a mirrored offsite storage

321 is ideal but 211 would also be ok for a home lab. Some run 110 and hope for the best.

how to access it

There are multiple ways to get to your data.

The headache free one for me is a vpn mesh (tailscale, pangolin, netbird), so all your devices are in a mesh and you can access your stiff from everywhere. pro:

• very secure as it relies on the wireguard protocol and is not exposing anything. Its also pretty fast, the cap is you own internet connection. It uses smart routing, so if you are in the same network, it tries to find the fastest way. cons:
• you can't share your story as easily without others having a vpn connection.

You can also use a wireguard connection to your home router and expose you complete home network to your vpn. Also secure, my router (Fritz! Box from avm) offers this natively, but I would argue the vpn mesh solution is easier.

There is the cloud flared tunnel which some recommend, I cant say anything about it, did not use it yet.

You could also do port forwarding on your network. That way you can expose a reverse proxy for example through your home router, and access it from the outside. That way you rely on the services you run to be secure, not have a zero day and to do the authentication well. For me the risk that I forgot to update a service and there being a security risk to my data is too high, so I use the vpn route.

services to run

What ever route you choose, here are suggestions I found nice:

• docker makes it easy and fun to start and stop stuff. I use compose files as they allow you to copy that config file as a backup.
• traefik as a reverse proxy. That way you can reach your services via a domain (like shoppinglist.hezaethos.lol or so). It allows to do port mapping as well, so you could run game severs as well. Its a nice trade off between ease of use and features. Caddy is easier but can't do dns-01 certificate requests.
• immich for hosting you images. Has phone apps, is pretty much just google photos self hosted.
• paperless to uplaod all your PDFs. It does machine learning to sort your files. Its just a convenient way to store all you documdnts in one place. Its not a google drive Alternative
• nextcloud or truenas to store files

Have fun! Do what ever feels fun and don't put your goals too high, it will burn you out :)

The AI buttle is deflating right now, CPUs are getting cheaper by about 20%, as well as ram and storage, as old boy Sammy can't hold up his exaggerations and had to admit he can only spend half as much in the next 5 years. I really hope to get a gpu with 16-24g in the next 2 years, running AI locally will only get better

To add yet another advice:

• Get a Lenovo or dell slim client (not a nuc/mini pc but the bigger version with data ports. Roughly same power but more useful hardware)

• get 2*4 tb hdd for mass storage

• a 500gb ssd for the os. If you have the money, maybe even 2 of them and clone them

• the os is tricky. You can use proxmox, which is basically like Linux but as you have multiple vms in there you can have multiple Linux installed to take care of. Another choice would be something like truenas, casaOs, unraid etc. I can't recommend one there, I use proxmox and its great if you like CLi/sah

• to make it accessible from not home, use tailscale. You can also use a domain/dns to not have to remember ips

• if you have the option, take a mother thin client or pc with same amount of storage to another location and install a backup system, like proxmox backup system. That way your data is safe. Take a look at encryption if you dong trust the other place.

• my backup server draws 15w idle and 40-50w when its working

• my home lab is drawing 30w idle and 60 under load

• its just another factor to be aware of

Have fun!

Paywall?

I am a bit confused. I see a lot of problems that the EU has. But it is so stupidly important to have a collective so we have a stance against other economy or military giants. Stuff like mandatory usb c, some environmental stuff, support of the Ukraine, having basically free trade and travel inside the EU, more wealthy countries supporting and helping economically weaker countries, GDPR (pain for devs, i know) and things like that come to my mind. I am aware there are a shit ton of problems in the EU, but I would not want to miss those above. The US would kick each country around like shit if we would not be united.

I sometimes feel like the left, which I count myself to, is just as populilistic as the far right. Its easy to bash on someone or a system that is flawed, but without the EU for example we would be fucked as well. Why not fight for a better EU? Why spend time and energy to divide again? Its not black and white as always I suppose

Isn't matter just a standard, that runs on multiple Protokolls like ZigBee or wifi?

So I am in a vicious cycle. I start doing something, notice there is a better way, change my setup and restart. So from just Ubuntu server, I developed to proxmox. From documenting everything manuall in joplin, i am now using ansible. I started with wireguard, then tailscale with selfhosted headscale. I try to get my setup right on the first try, which i notice is stupid as I am writing. It just hinders me to make progress. I think I should rather try to get it up and running as fast as possible (and securely of cause) to make progress and fail fast maybe? And I like all the changes I made, I think they were the right choice, but its a bit tiering. And I like ansible, I just have the urge to automate absolutely everything, so I can redeploy everything right after I installed proxmox. Which is not necessary at all at this stage, idk :D Maybe someone has some tips how to overcome perfectionism?

Thanks for your reply!

I know about the distribution of power, that has a kind of pyramid shape, sorry for the lack of vocabulary. I have also seen videos, of cause one sided, from people that lived in China for some time and displaying their view. One very popular story is the "they paint their grass green", which I understood as follows: There is the goal of having a certain amount of green land in the country, so each region trys to reach that goal and show the higher ups how good it is going by having green grass and hills. This is of cause a very simplified scenario, but I have read a few other things that aren't so great. Of cause you can say the same thing about many other western and global north countries, but very few people are so emotional and strong opinionated as supporters of China, some north korea or Russia. I feel like i have not read a comment with such a strong opinion about any other country here on Lemmy.

I see that the view of most westerns is shifted from reality, but I have not read a comment that seems to see both sides of that country, it seems very extremistic.

Now when I think of China, these things come to mind:

• the Uighurs
• not quite working democracy
• extreme surveillance
• stories of people getting herassed by the police for criticising the state or being different (Naomi Wu on yt for example)
• impressive industrial development in the last few decades
• high working ethics
• creativity in engineering
• skilled labour
• high building rates of solar and renewable energy sources
• also high coal production and high building rates of coal power plants
• high censorship, as it can be seen with deepseek and other AI or media
• stories about testing radioactivity on a village
• striving for higher environmental regulations in the industry
• affiliation with Russia, that invaded Ukraine (after the Nato got closer of cause, which might be seen as a provocative move)
• affiliation with north korea, which is a different conversation
• their problem with Taiwan and tsmc
• hard working conditions in factories (owned by western companies sometimes, but the government is supposed to protect the citizens in my view)

Now this is of cause not at all everything and I am aware its a view fuelled by western media. But if half of those things are true, its still not going great.

I don't want to talk China down, I want to understand why so many people in this space are pro china, when I see the government as pretty critical. I know the us is putting a ton of effort into discredit other forms of government or markets, and there are for sure a few points in this list that is heavily influenced by them.

Caddy is nice and super simple. Only issue I had was: it can't control domains if its behind a VPN. I use hetzner and they have an API, but the feature is not native to caddy so I would have had to rebuild caddy as an docker image. Rather annoying tbh, because everything else is great about it