Just a PSA. For voip to work you’ll need something like Coturn (TURN signaling server) which needs a gaping hole in your firewall. We ended up using mumble for ingame voice and jitsi meet if we need the other stuff (screen share, videos, whiteboard, etc)

Same here, got locked out of my main gmail/google account and there was no real person to help me recover 10+ years of my stuff. Never again.

Is there a demo? How does it run? Needs a server or can be run from an android device?

The cumulative hours we’ve lost screwing around with the manual placement spacial audio on Axon… When it went tits up we switched to Mumble tho

How about the “private notes” chat on Signal?

The real question is, “which one of the gazillion voice chat apps can properly filter audio without a lengthy setup that my mongoloid friends will skip?”

I am the guy moving the group to different apps and platforms, some follow more reluctantly but in the end we stick together. We’ve jumped from TS2 to Skype, Dolby Axon, Mumble, Hangouts, Discord, Mumble and back to Discord. Now I’m getting a strong whiff of enshittification, and I’m weighing my options. We’re about 10-12 but mostly 4 or 5 active at a time.

Jami, Matrix, Jitsi, Rocket and again ol reliable Mumble… It’d be nice if mumble had screen share and a better automatic audio setup, so far the best quality of vc over any other app/service.

I’ll check out Movim I saw named in the comments, any other hidden gem I should try?

This! I’d say that the best we can do is educate. Over the last 20 years people got taught to be lazy and go with the herd. They don’t want to change, all their stuff is already “in the cloud” and “I don’t have time to go tinker with that nerd stuff, I need something that works”.

“Why learn a new messaging app if everyone is using WhatsApp already”

– some of my friends and acquaintances 2025

We’ve spent last few months playing Enshrouded. The dedicated server is a resource hog tho, even on an empty server it’d use a ton of CPU time. Still lots of fun with a few friends exploring and building stuff

Trackmania can be self hosted? I’d love a friends-only score board and custom track rotations

I have an old i5 Mac mini (2011 I think) as a backup for infrastructure stuff (proxy, home assistant, pihole). If something goes terribly wrong I can just plug it in and start it. All the LXCs are copies of my main proxmox rig, albeit a bit outdated (BC I don’t leave it plugged in). I know I could do better with proxmox’s HA but seems like another thing I’d be on the hook to keep maintaining.

The normal account (dafault) is the only monetized option, giving 100mb of free space.

I did a quick check on the self hosted option in the beginning and same, seemed too convoluted and decided to stick with the local method, since I tested it (turning phone WiFi off) and it was still syncing (via tailscale)

On the upside, I tested the import/export features and seemed rather solid, so you can always create a new local account (save the seed phrase!) And bring your stuff back into it.

I have nginx set up for limited stuff, most of my selfhosted services I kept behind tailscale.

The only big con I found against it, it’s hard to switch between the self-hosted and “normal” vaults. I should test if I can have another copy (eg appimage) with separate settings for that.

I am heavily using the local-only mode but I’ve also recommended it to some normie friends, so sharing vaults in different modes becomes a hassle

Edit: tldr, I’m using the “local only” mode but since I have tailscale, everywhere is LAN ;)

Pick any distro you like, where the touchscreen already works, install flatpak and butler

I know this is a rather necro-y post, but I’m surprised nobody mentioned anytype. I’ve been using it for the last 2 months and I’m slowly moving my notes off obsidian, as well as my journal off logseq/nextcloud.

I went in a bit weary, the webpage looks like the typical startup project ready to pull the rug off your feet at any point, but there’s a self-hosted option and even a local-only mode that syncs devices across your LAN.

I normally tell it straight from why I got interested on it: “I like my stuff being mine”

https://file.pizza/ just because the pizza toppings URLs are fun and nasty

You say that, but I’ve seen so many dodgy iot devices… Specially deploying PiHole you start to see so much random traffic from stupid stuff like a smartplug or a TV box

I recently finished something like this at home, npmplus+pihole. I’ll never do it again, and the moment it breaks I’ll go back to just using Tailscale’s MagicDNS

I have a few Philips wiz lights and they are reliable. I blocked them from connecting to the internet and I manage them from HomeAssistant. The only issue is that if I have a blackout, they come back all on at 100% brightness. I know there’s a setting for “keep the last state” on setup, but I redid it a few times and it never sticks.

If you can overcome the first kinda large step of setting up a basic install of Proxmox + ZFS pool, you’ll love it. You can try shit out and nuke it if you don’t like it. Helper Scripts from here are also a great way to try stuff without breaking anything you already have. each container gets its own IP so you don’t have to juggle stuff with a reverse proxy (which is a PITA to set up properly) and with TailScale on the host, you can pretty much access everything from anywhere, without exposing it to the wider internet.

Creating a ZFS pool is also rather nice, because you can keep adding new disks to the pool when you’re running short. Ideally you’d use some mirroring for security. Backups are also nice with proxmox, as long as you don’t give every LXC a giant size quota.

Last thing, DO get an UPS, even if it’s a small consumer grade one that lasts 5 minutes. Make sure it has some sort of conectivity (network or USB) and it’s linux compatible. I’ve lost a lot of time rebuilding a 2yo NextCloud install that went all wonky after a blackout.

So in a detailed summary from your points:

1. Proxmox makes it easy to make, test and restore backups, even if it’s for a spare drive or across the network. Setting up a /mnt/usb mountpoint for an external USB drive by UUID is one way of having it available when needed, and kept offline for safekeeping
2. Frigate NVR. Lightweight, can integrate with HomeAssistant for automations and alerts. Try getting “dumb” IP cameras, most of the smart IoT stuff will try to upsell you on crap and might end up bricked by the company down the line.
3. Nextcloud for your PC backups and Immich for your phone photos. NC also has an android and iOS app that can sync folders you tell it to.
4. Look up “YAMS”. I’d recommend running the whole YAMS stack + portainer on a separate Proxmox LXC so you can easily put the whole thing on a separate VPN instead of relying on the provided gluetun package
5. For quick One-offs, portainer is more than enough. There’s Pterodactyl and Pelican for more in-depth server hosting but I found it too cumbersome
6. PiHole LXC on a fixed IP and set your devices (or better yet, your router/AP if you can) pointing to it’s IP as the primary DNS server
7. not really sure what you mean here, wired connections tend to be the best, maybe get a Pi or a small android box that supports ethernet.
8. HomeAssistant (use the VM helper script for full HAOS!)
9. HomeAssistant again, try getting a smart meter that doesn’t rely on shitty APIs like Tuya, unless you’re willing to dive into hacking with tasmota.
10. ProxmoxLXC, there’s already a helper script for it.
11. Kiwix-server has a docker image, easily hostable and it takes Wikipedia’s offline archive files.

Good Luck and Have Fun!