Over the last half year, I’ve been really entering my Escape From Big Tech era. Replacing Windows with Bazzite, and making that stick, really gave me confidence that I could make similar shifts with other tech I rely on. I looked around at what else I could easily change, and found a whole cottage industry of home and remote server solutions, including a lot of really mature-looking open source software for everything from file storage, automatic backups, email, shared calendars, and even collaborative document editing. So I started researching what my options were for having a home server setup.
When I explained this idea to a friend, she described it as “digital homesteading.” Like the digital version of growing your own food or building your own shed and being self-sufficient. Not in a prepper fantasy way, but about living sustainably. I really liked that term. Thanks, Natalie!
Two paths to a digital homestead #
Of course there are two ways you can approach setting up a server from a hardware standpoint: a local server that is a computer you have at home that’s always running, or a remote server you rent from a data center somewhere in the world.
There are benefits and drawbacks to consider if you’re just looking to have one server. I expected to just go with a remote server and not deal with having yet another computer sitting somewhere in my apartment, but found that getting a tiny, low-cost server is pretty cheap. So I opted to do both and take advantage of the benefits of both setups.
Local Server #
| Pros |
|---|
| - All files are kept in-house on drives you control. |
| - By default, it’s services can only be accessed from your local network. |
| - Once you own all the hardware, all you have to pay for is the electricity to run it. |
| - Can be the cheaper solution for large amounts of storage. |
| Cons |
|---|
| - Higher up-front cost, if you buy the computer and storage. |
| - Yet another thing in your apartment to find space for and regularly dust. |
| - You’re responsible for any maintenance, and troubleshooting it when something happens or isn’t working right. |
Remote Server #
| Pros |
|---|
| - Server administration nitty-gritty is handled by the provider. |
| - Any files you put there are off-site, in case anything happens to your home. |
| - No up-front cost for hardware. |
| - Flexibility to change how much CPU power, memory, and storage space with a quick account update. |
| - Accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. |
| Cons |
|---|
| - Hidden cost: you ideally should own a domain name. Otherwise you’re stuck typing the IP address for your server into your browser to get to it. |
| - You don’t own the hardware or facility, only the provider has full control. |
| - You have to keep paying for it as long as you want that server running. |
| - Can get pretty pricey, especially if you need a lot of storage. |
So for uses that need a lot of storage, or I’d rather the data stay at home, I use the local server, and for applications I want accessible from my phone, I use the remote server.
Local Server #
Raspberry Pi is the most well-known single-board computer (SBC) out there, but it is not the only one by a long mile. There are also other similar computers from companies like Banana Pi, Orange Pi, LattePanda, and ZimaSpace. Prices for each tend to stay below $200, and some brands specialize in tiny computers optimized for certain tasks versus being general-use.
After looking around, price comparing, and watching lots of YouTube videos, I wound up going for the ZimaBlade, which has an optional NAS kit you can buy that gives you all you need to create a storage server (minus the hard drives).
The NAS kit comes with a 16GB memory stick, a little two drive case, and the SATA cables needed to plug those drives into the ZimaBlade. And pre-installed is CasaOS, a custom Linux setup that you access through your web browser that makes installing/configuring services easy. Also, not that it’s important, but the ZimaBlade looks like a Walkman with techy aesthetics. I love that! And for storage, hard drives are still the best option when you want more capacity for your money, so got two 4TB Seagate drives that are configured for being used in NASs. Apparently hard drives can have specialty configurations. Total cost of everything was ~$380.
Setting this up was as simple as plugging it all in, though I had to take the CMOS battery to clear the memory to get it to boot for the first time. A lot of folks report having this issue with the ZimaBlade, but not something I’ve had to do since. I didn’t have to configure anything, even the software I installed through CasaOS for the most part. Stuff just worked. This now sits on my desk, quietly working away without me needing to touch it. Here’s what I have going on it:
| Software | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Jellyfin | I’ve put my media collection onto this server, including my music, photos, and I worked on digitizing my DVD and Blu-ray collection. Jellyfin then lets me give them proper tags and media info, and on my Apple TV, I got the app Swiftfin, which looks and acts like any of the major streaming services. I’ve watched plenty of my movies and TV shows like this, and I’ve never seen a hitch. |
| Gitea | Looks and acts like GitHub. I told it to migrate a lot of my GitHub projects over as mirror repositories. When I make a commit to one of those projects on GitHub, Gitea on my server sees that and pulls in those changes. Nice little auto-backup solution! |
| Syncthing | Think Dropbox, but instead of one “Dropbox” folder, you can set any folder on your computer to sync with another computer also running Syncthing. This keeps any changes or additions I make to my music collection replicate to all of my other computers. Same with my wallpaper collection and photos taken on my phone. |
There are other things available that folks will find useful, but I haven’t set up (at least not yet):
| Software | Use Case |
|---|---|
| Pi-hole | An ad-blocker that operates at the network-level. So you don’t have to get an ad-blocker for each of your computers’ browsers, ads are blocked for anyone connecting to your network. |
| 2FAuth | Backs up all your two-factor authentication codes and lets you sync them with different devices. |
| Sonarr | This service lets you create a list of movies, TV shows, and other media, and when a new episode comes out, will automatically find and start a torrent download that matches your fidelity/language/encoding preferences. |
| Vaultwarden | BitWarden-compatible password manager server. If you use BitWarden, you can point to this instead of the official syncing service. |
| Home Assistant | Manages and monitors all the IoT devices in your home, if you have that kind of thing. |
Remote Server #
You’ve probably heard of services like Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, and so on. These cloud services let you rent Virtual Private Servers (VPS) for a monthly fee to run whatever you want on them. Usually, you pick how many CPU cores, memory, and storage space the server has, and you get that with nothing but a clean install of Ubuntu or Windows Server and a public IP address.
In my server research, I also learned about
YunoHost, a server management software that gives you a
catalog of open source software to choose from and it handles parts the installation and configuration for you. If you have a domain name for your server, you can also specify the URL to access each application (like https://docs.mydomain.cool/ or https://mydomain.cool/docs). On a friend’s recommendation, I got an entry-level VPS from
Hetzner Cloud and loaded YunoHost onto it. I had to go into the command line a few times to configure a few things, but I didn’t find it difficult. We’ve so far used ours to do a few things our local server doesn’t:
| Software | Use Case |
|---|---|
| NextCloud | This is essentially a clone of Google Drive, but with a catalog of extensions to expand its functionality. For ours, I added a web-based version of LibreOffice so we can open and edit docs like Google Docs, plus a calendar and contacts service. This replaces my need for all of the Google Suite, as NextCloud lets you sync with most calendar and contacts programs, including iOS and Android. |
| Actual | This is a budgeting software very similar to You Need A Budget and uses the same ‘money envelopes’ paradigm. For a small fee, you can have it auto-sync with your bank accounts just like YNAB, too. |
| FreshRSS | An RSS Reader like Google Reader of yore. I rarely use the web interface and instead access it from local RSS reading software like NetNewsWire on iOS and Newsflash on Linux. Many sites and blogs still support RSS! It’s still a great way to keep on top of all of your news sites and blogs without having to manually go to each place! |
| Zerobin | It’s a Pastebin-like service that’s encrypted and gives the options to have each note exist for a limited time, have password protection, or to burn after reading. |
Keep in mind, since I’m renting a cheap-end VPS to run these, they are not as fast as the Name Brand services. But they’re perfectly usable! I think that’s a fine trade-off as I rarely need any of this to be lightning fast, just to be there when and how I need them.
Reliability #
For the local server, I’ve rarely had to touch the physical hardware since I set it all up. One time it seemed to fail at doing an automatic update and it was offline until I hooked it into a monitor and keyboard and fixed the issue it was complaining about. That was once.
The remote server was quick to initially set up with YunoHost, and with some applications, I needed to spend some time troubleshooting configurations. That wound up happening over a few short work sessions over three weekends. Once it was all working as expected, I’ve barely had to touch anything under the hood since.
All of this was way less scary and took less technical knowledge than I ever expected. And except for email, I almost never touch Google services anymore. I’ll handle the email later, but even as reliable as things have been so far, I don’t have the confidence to handle my own email server. Still doing research on that.
Conclusion #
Thanks to the maturity of a lot of different open source projects, plus the availability of cheap hardware and services intended for just this use case, I was able to roll my own set of web services that keep my data in-house and used only in the ways I want them to be. Without much web tech experience, I drastically reduced my dependence on large tech monopolies that have, more and more, been using my data as feed for their AI services and ad networks.
And I think it’s all ready for more people to use to do the same! More folks just need to know it’s there. The barrier to entry is pretty low!