For me, the most essentials are definitely:

• PhotoPrism
• Jellyfin
• Navidrome
• Wiki.js

The script you provided works as expected for me. I’m on Arch, so the binary is called perl-rename, but no other modification is needed.

Even though it’s not as popular as the other options, parts of NetBSD are used for many usecases. Take a look at

https://netbsd.org/gallery/products.html

and you’ll see many familiar names.

I took a look at it. From what I understand, some of the lines in your setup are redundant. The final product seems to do basically the same job as mine. In any case, if it works, it works.

Hey, great post. I have one request. Can you maybe add some description for what the iptables entries do? I have a similar setup with a lot less iptables rules that works well for me. But I’m not an expert in networking, and am now worried that I might be missing something that can leak my home IP.

Navidrome does that. I think you just used a bad frontend. Try Tempo if you’re using Android. Or Feishin on desktop.

I’ve been very happy with Navidrome. I have it accessible on a subdomain, so I can just use it from wherever I want. Feishin is a great frontend for Linux desktop, and Tempo is a great frontend for Android.

My friend uses Jellyfin instead of Navidrome, and he’s also happy with it. Both the frontends that I mentioned work with Jellyfin as well.

I’ve heard many people complain about DuckDNS. Personally use desec.io for DDNS and it’s been solid.

I prefer Office 365 online.

What I’ve realized in my (very limited) experience in selfhosting, it’s always best to use a general purpose server OS rather than anything geared to a specific usecase, unless that’s the only thing you’re gonna use it for. So, if you want a separate NAS drive, then it’s a good idea to use TrueNAS on it. But on your main server, it’ll be best to use some sort of RHEL downstream distro like AlmaLinux.

Yeah, dual booting on a single drive causes more harm than good. It’s very annoying, and I’ve seen people think it’s Linux’s fault, saying “I can boot into Windows just fine.” It’s like saying a bully is the better kid since he never has dirty clothes.

I use Syncthing and a bunch of rsync scripts to keep my machines in sync. The stuff I want synced continuously is handled by Syncthing. Other stuff is synced on a daily basis using the rsync scripts and anachron. For Photos, I use PhotoPrism. I simply sync the Photos from my smartphone to a folder and make PhotoPrism scan it on a regular basis using ofelia. For cameras, I need to copy the photos manually, but I don’t think there’s a way around that.

I do use Ventoy, but a more “traditional” alternative that I like is Popsicle. Super lightweight, and works very well. Some cases do require a dedicated USB, where Ventoy won’t work, at least not without trickery (e.g. anything with persistent storage).

Don’t mean to necrobump. But I have Syncthing GUI working over a very similar setup. Let me know if you still need help setting it up.

It’s a choice. We know that it’s riskier to use stuff from AUR. Which is why it’s highly recommended to read the PKGBUILD before installing the package. The basic Arch install doesn’t even include an AUR helper. That said, AUR is typically very reliable for packages with a decent userbase. It’s mostly due to the community aspect. Bad actors are caught relatively easily as the PKGBUILD is available to look at.

I dislike both. But since Google Docs is free, it’s easier to use everywhere and with all kinds of groups.

I’ve been using exclusively Linux since high school, and now I’m doing a PhD in math. It’s always been pretty smooth. I used to have a separate Windows rig for gaming, but don’t really need it anymore, now that Proton works very well with most games. (I don’t really play AAA games, so that helps.)

Coming to the point, for academic stuff, I mostly needed to use a PDF reader (Zathura and qPdfView), LaTeX, and some computation and graphing software (mostly SageMath). I sometimes needed to use DOCX files, but LibreOffice works well for that. Most other software I need from time to time are usually Linux native.

Also, many universities provide access to O365. I’ve used it in some rare cases where I needed to provide input in some collaborative document. But in most cases, I was able to convince my friends/colleagues to use Google Docs instead.

Unless you do CAD, or some creative work, Linux should be perfect for your usecase.

Relevant xkcd

Lol. Hope you found something else to enjoy with the tea.

Take a look at this.