Proxmox on a Lenovo micro form factor is probably a good cost effective option. Get a business class ThinkCentre, like an M720 or something similar that’s 3-5 years old that a corpo has just upgraded away from, i5 or Ryzen 5 with however much storage and RAM you want. Spin up a container specifically and only for PiHole+Unbound (and consider adding a pi or some other dedicated hardware for DNS later on for redundancy in case your main goes down), and then the rest is however you want to build your environment.

For me, I’ve got a Pi dedicated to 3 key tasks: PiHole, Unbound, and PiVPN (edit: and Nginx Proxy Manager. It’s dedicated to 4 key tasks…). It’s basically my filtering interface between the home network the rest of the internet immediately after my router handles the frontline defenses, and then I’ve got a Proxmox cluster to run most of the rest of my internal services.

What? You heard a sound? I don’t know anything about that. I’ve just been hanging out here in the blinds relaxing, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Ah ok thank you, I have the paid Proton so I had a feeling there were complications outside that space but wasn’t sure

If you buy your own domain, you can connect it to an account like Proton or Tuta, making your personal email a little more portable. Last I checked, .nl domains were like $6 or $7 per year on Namecheap. And I’m pretty sure you can link both Proton and Tuta to a Thunderbird client if you really want to. You may need a paid account with the email provider if you want to link a custom domain, I can’t recall offhand.

Ultimately up to you, but I’d go with no GUI and just use ssh (and sftp if you need to do file transfers).

When I was using Docker, it was headless because the GUI just ate up space and resources I didn’t need. All your interaction will be in the shell anyway, launching your compose.yml files.

But, if dealing with a headless machine sounds like more trouble than you want to try, install the DE if your choice and breathe easy because it’ll still work perfectly fine.

I think you’ve put more thought into how to get started than many others would! You have a pretty good plan from what it seems. My thoughts from each section below.

Hardware: I’m partial to Crucial and Kingston for storage that is affordable and dependable

OS: I’d probably spin up a Debian install if I were in your shoes and run my services using docker-compose files. It’s a quick and easy to get up and running, and despite the ease, there is still the option to do a lot of customization when you want to, and that will make it easy to learn more at your own pace and leisure.

Services: For the CalDav portion, I’m really liking Radicale.

Security: PiVPN is what I’m running on my actual RPi along with PiHole, and it was a super simple setup. I connect via Wireguard from any of my other devices.

Another idea: dokuwiki, to document your process setting up various service for future reference

PiHole, PiVPN, maybe a reverse proxy like nginx proxy manager to make connecting to your various web management portals you have an easy way to map it to a human readable url

I just don’t want my NAS doing anything other than being a NAS, so I intentionally don’t run extra services there, but its a matter of finding what works for you. As long as you get to the destination you’re looking for, its mission accomplished

Got an old raspberry pi laying around? PiHole+PiVPN is something I run on an old 3B+ I think, so I have something dedicated running both. But otherwise, I’d probably just spin up a container on a server or cluster and I’d probably go with debian and just run the exact same PiVPN setup script I did for the pi because it was super easy.

Let it grow, let it grow

Graboids! Watch out!

I’m sorry, has this community somehow become some sort of curtain community? Is the delicate interplay between the colors and textures of the curtain, wallpaper, and flooring supposed to move me in some way that speaks “cat”? How dare you! Are there no standards anymore? Have we no decency amongst ourselves? Will the mods not step in to put an end to silliness like this? I did not sign up to see boring pictures of curtains with remarkably cute little paws. What is this preposterousness?

Yeah, I’m not about to defend Samsung or their app distribution by any means, I just know they had the Plex app when I needed it.

Thanks for the heads up on Roku though, I appreciate it!

Is that on an Onn TV? I might have to go check it out again. Thanks!

Samsung TVs have a Plex app, but not a Jellyfin one. Lots of people have Samsung TVs. I mean lots. Other modern TVs are likely the same, like Onn (at least the Roku TVs) last time I checked, and again they are all over. The ease-of-use factor really is a huge win for Plex.

Edit: Yes, Samsung Tizen models can try and sideload an app, but that’s not something the vast majority of people are ever going to even think about, let alone figure out how to accomplish.

Edit 2: Well shiver me timbers, Jellyfin’s on those Onn TV’s. TIL.

I like radicale: https://radicale.org/

Insurance company denying coverage for reasons: MontgomeryBurnsTappingFingersAndGrinningEvilly.jpg

Can confirm, mine is touch-enabled. Forgot to mention that in my post. Model 20UD-003KUS

I just got a Lenovo T14 Gen 1 with a Ryzen 7 4750U (I think that’s around 11th gen on Intel?), 16GB soldered RAM as well as an open slot to add more, 14" screen (on the larger side of your wishlist, I know), and it was $300US on eBay. It’s been fine with Linux Mint running Cinnamon as my daily driver right now, and also fine with other related OSs like vanilla Debian and Ubuntu. Have not tried with Arch, btw, but these T-series machines have a pretty good reputation as far as I know in terms of Linux ease-of-use.