this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
31 points (53.6% liked)

Selfhosted

39893 readers
348 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

There are a lot of reasons not to give them your money. They're assholes to the maker community and they openly talk shit on a lot of their customer base. That's beside the point, though, really.

It's just not a spectacular option for hosting. In order to get a Rpi competitive with even the shittiest laptop from 7 years ago, you're going to end up spending more than you would spend on a decent laptop from 7 years ago.

If it is a computer that turns on, it will likely function orders of magnitude better than an Rpi and won't bind you to ARM architecture. My entire hosting setup was pulled out of a recycling pile for free. Install ubuntu/ubuntu server and enjoy yourself.

If you intend on spending any amount of money on this hobby, I cannot express enough how much I recommend against any of that money going toward a Raspberry Pi.

EDIT: A lot of you seem to be reading this as "Raspberry Pis are all nonfunctional" and getting mad about it. Don't do that.

Edit 2: Good to see that all the stupid parts of reddit made it here

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I do agree that stuff like the RPi 4 is in a weird spot where it's too weak for a lot of things but also too expensive for the light stuff. The biggest gripes I have are the SD cards which makes data intensive tasks impossible/expensive and overall makes it so you need to think about not causing to much writing. That and how hard they are to place. Large enough to be ugly and in the way but small so they're awkward to find a good spot for.

However I think the RPi zeroes are amazing for building small but intelligent sensors like picking up when a specific bluetooth device enters a room or a small microphone to create a relay point for a voice assistant. They're super easy to program since they still run basic Linux compared to other alternatives that are more efficient sure and some even cheaper but require you to access them via COM or learn much more machine close coding. Which puts up a massive hurdle for prototyping and playing around with the possibilities.

As for using old laptops that a big ehhh for me. Find yourself a used NUC instead. Much better form factor and the same power or even better. Though if they dont need to be visible then I really do prefer a small desktop, then it can have decent fans and hold hard drives. Everybody needs a NAS right? And building one yourself is easy and they make for excellent home servers too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Used NUCs don't have built-in UPSs, like used laptops do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Battery is the first thing to give and a 7 year old one as the post is on about is unlikely to have much use left as a UPS. But sure, in theory that's nice but if you need UPS then buy a dedicated solution, since that's actually reliable. If you don't really need it then don't buy laptops for that reason.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As for using old laptops that a big ehhh for me. Find yourself a used NUC instead.

Yes, but that costs money and I already have the laptop in my possession. Which is the majority reason why old laptops are used for this kind of thing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sure but that is a different premise than the post isn't it? They explicitly talk about buying an old laptop.