Syncthing (as the name implies) is meant to synchronize folders across machines. QuickDAV is meant to transfer files/folders from one machine to another. They definitely both have there uses, and there uses might overlap in a lot of cases, but they also have there own niches. Like, I wouldn’t use Syncthing to transfer a photo to my desktop once, and I wouldn’t use QuickDAV to keep my photos directory synchronized across several machines.

Basically the advantage is that it’s ridiculously easy to set up. You just install the app and open it. The downside is that it’s ad-hoc. It’s not meant to be a long running server like smb.

For most of those services, you’re looking at a few days to assemble and set up a server. For email, plan to spend the next month learning and troubleshooting.

You can run all of that on basically any computer. If you have an old desktop, that would work great.

Email often isn’t possible to self host because many ISPs block outbound connections on port 25. But, you can host it on some VPS providers, like DigitalOcean. The IP they give you will almost certainly have a terrible reputation and result in a lot of your mail going into people’s spam folders. So, you’ll have to spend some time contacting IP blacklist providers.

Another option is to host the inbound SMTP servers, and handle outbound through a relay server. I’m not gonna recommend any, because I’m not too familiar with them.

I know a fair bit about running email services, because I created and run https://port87.com/, a fairly new email service. I had to learn a lot about email to build it.

Ubuntu Studio is great, but absolutely not for beginners. Ubuntu Studio isn’t the same thing as Ubuntu, too. They change a lot from the base Ubuntu.

Not for beginners.

Yeah, I switched to Ubuntu in 2008, and it was great for years, but lately it’s just been so awful.

Three correct answers:

• Mint
• Fedora
• Pop

And a few incorrect answers:

• Ubuntu
• Arch
• Ubuntu again
• Really, don’t go with Ubuntu

Something that uses the Matter protocol might be what you’re looking for. My understanding is that they can be disconnected from the internet (only able to communicate with your Matter controller over your local network) and still work.

Maybe something like this:

https://a.co/d/0rMibVK

With a controller like this:

https://a.co/d/9OD97pR

If you are, you’re usually limited to progressive web apps. Not a bad thing, just something to be aware of. That’s the reason I had to give up when I tried. Not having a decent navigation software was really hard.

Really? That’s awesome! Hold on, I need to go install it on my one PC that still runs windows.

Linux Phones are a thing… 🥺

Don’t auto update. Read the release notes before you update things. Sometimes you have to do some things manually to keep from breaking things.

That’s what dm-integrity is for. Also, absolutely do not use Btrfs for RAID5/RAID6

I have eight Reolink cameras. They’re awesome. Haven’t had any issues with them other than the occasional disconnect, which only lasts a few seconds.

I use Ubuntu Server -> dm-integrity -> mdadm -> ext4. Super easy to set up (it just takes forever to do dm-integrity on the drives, but you don’t need to watch it), works great, easy to maintain. Everything I run on it is dockerized with docker compose and sits behind nginx-proxy-manager, so it’s also super easy to maintain.

Ubuntu | Arch | Fedora | FreeBSD

Is I am ready for the season that’s over? No matter where you live, Summer is either over or a season away.

Anything you want to back up (data directories, media directories, db data) you would use a bind mount for to a directory on the host. Then you can back them up just like everything else on the host.

There’s one thing I’m hosting on bare metal, a WebDAV server. I’m running it on the host because it uses PAM for authentication, and that doesn’t work in a container.

Have you installed the Nvidia drivers? Unlike AMD and Intel, the drivers for Nvidia aren’t included by default (because their code is closed source), so you’ll have to install them before your graphics will work.

Unfortunately, OpenSUSE doesn’t offer an easy way to do this. You can follow this guide:

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers

It’s a bit hard, but if you have trouble, you can ask here. Good luck!