A Windows VM running Windows terminal, SSH’d back into the host, obviously.

Honestly I stick with whatever the default is and never had a problem that led me to find anything else.

Look at Amazon and their Fire TV platform. It’s just android, with all of the Google stuff stripped out.

Sure, Google may not be getting any money for that, but they are getting more dev time and attention on the open source parts of Android which helps to solidify the base of the OS which helps them.

And Android got popular because it was open and manufacturers could build phones that support it without necessarily needing to involve Google (or at least without needing to certify it or meet strict standards) which let the platform grow significantly. If Google closed it up today it would likely cause a fork in the Android platform ecosystem and you’d end up with “Google Android” on pixel and “Open Android” on all others.

Many registrars let you buy a domain and set up dynamic DNS for it within their system so you can own a domain and get dyndns on it.

Otherwise you could accomplish it with a VPS but you’d only need the smallest one available because it would just need to run nginx to forward to your home ip (and a small tool to update that IP when it changes). So you could probably get something for less than $5/mo.

Sorry I don’t have any suggestions, but I’m very curious about your use case. What led you to needing this?

Are you doing web dev with just a phone? Impressive

I see you got your answer, but I’m adding on for anyone else that comes across this.

For me, I learned the most when I had a disposable and replaceable system. When I was dual booted I was too scared to touch anything in case it fucked everything up. Once I started poking round on a Pi, LiveUSB, etc it was a lot easier to learn because I could always restart.

Id start there with something like Mint or Ubuntu. Then set it up in a way where you can easily replace your OS so you can reset it often and fuck around. Then just learn as you go.

Just be careful you don’t get their “smarthome” line, at least for cameras. It doesn’t require Internet to operate, but it requires Internet for configuration and management.

I’m not sure if that’s the same with their doorbells, but it was true of their wifi cameras.

Probably some kind of wallpaper app then? Or maybe a video call app downloading backgrounds?

You could try limiting files permissions on a bunch of apps to see what gets them to stop.

I wonder if you could copy (or buy used) some crypto mining rigs for this. I’m not sure if there’s some kind of bottleneck im not aware of though.

That’s a shame. I didn’t realize it was that locked down. Ive had a lot of terrible routers but all the ones I remember allowed me at least a port forward.

I think OP can accomplish some of the same result if he can get a cheap VPS to connect through (have the laptop Wireguard to the VPS, then have a proxy on the VPS forward to the laptop over the VPN, but that’s probably not worth the hassle for a starter project unfortunately.

With most consumer wifi networks you can usually enable port forwarding. That would let you access services from anywhere.

Personally I would set up a Wireguard VPN server on the laptop and enable port forwarding only for the Wireguard port. This will let you access your laptop from anywhere, and it will protect you by limiting your attack surface (basically you only need to have a device Wireguard connection and you don’t need to worry as much about securing every other service you want to run).

Then I’d set up dynamic DNS with any DNS provider so you don’t need to keep track of a changing IP.

Then you can install whatever services you want on the laptop and you’ll be able to access them from anywhere by connecting to the Wireguard VPN. It does mean you can’t easily let a friend access a service on your laptop, but the tradeoff is you don’t have to worry as much about security while you’re learning.

But would this policy actually prevent that? A vandal in a community of 100 people would only be charged 1% of the repair fees (assuming they aren’t caught), seems like a meaningless disincentive for them.

And forcing community members to self-police or be charged fees is asking for trouble.

It’s also part of the reason why maintenance budgets exist. The condo board/government/etc should be responsible for factoring in the risk of vandalism repairs into their budget and spreading that cost over time. That’s why they exist.

At the end of the day it’s my dues/taxes that pay it either way, but I shouldn’t get stuck with a surprise assessment unless it’s a major unexpected repair.

Personally I like to keep my data on a separate system because it helps me keep it stable and secure compared to my more “fun” servers.

That said, being able to run compute on the same server as storage removes a bit of hassle.

This might be the best option honestly, though self hosted would be a bit better of course.

Thank you, I got tunnel vision to selfhosted options.

Does gitea let you have issues that do t belong to a specific project?

My smarthome isn’t backed by a git repo, and having a phantom placeholder project isn’t super appealing to me to force things to work. (though Ill take a look, may be worth the fuss, especially since I could use a gitea instance anyway…)

Same here. My only complaint was the slow adoption of hardware MFA tokens, and the limited DNSSEC support on some TLDs but that’s mostly resolved now.

Always looking for more, but so far it’s pretty minimal.

• Pi.hole with Gravity Sync
• openhabian for smarthome hub

Looking to add Jellyfin and a sonarr radarr setup, but my QNAP doesn’t like doing actual work so I’ve been struggling. Planning to add a mini PC soon as a more stable server and to centralize things a bit.