Kavita has been good. I wanted to use it more for organising, fetching metadata and reading comic books from the server. Works well with Android and the Kahon app (+Kavita extension) on my Android tablet.

I got sick of the cat and mouse with updates and youtube making changes.

I tried Grayjay from f-droid and I’m never going back. Getting all my video platforms on one amazing app with excellent queueing, background play, pop-out player, etc. It even has ad-blocking and sponsorblock built in. I’ve happily paid for this app and set it up ok my PC too. Highly recommended.

This is the origin of the phrase “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

This is not related to the solution posted, but may be useful to someone:

My NAS has been amazing for this. This obviously needs additional hardware, but can be done by connecting a USB stick to your existing router. Works great as the middle man to move files to any device (PC, Steam Deck, handheld emulation console, etc). Also works great to auto sync the files with syncthing.

Share and comment in communities, free from corporations

My opinion on that for myself is that it is better to watch a video guide on a boss to be able to enjoy an amazing game rather than abandon it completely.

The other thing to say is (for roguelites generally) attack power = defense. It’s usually a damage check. If you can’t output enough damage then you can’t really go on dodging endlessly in a major boss fight. The best defense is to be able to put out enough damage to end it (relatively) quickly.

I use this already. Works great. Thanks for your hard work on this.

Roguelites have all been great on the Deck. Brotato, Enter the Gungeon, Hades 2, etc etc.

I’m using Calibre web to organise books, convert format and download metadata; and then use Kavita to read my books/comics. Works great.

Synology. Although I’m sure other ready made NAS machines will probably work and be chapter if you want to explore.

That was my understanding, that Immich and PaperlessNGX run AI locally on your machine. That’s why the server PC sounds like a fighter jet ready to take off for hours on end when a large library is first added.

Fragmented communities is such an annoying problem in the fediverse.

If you’re getting a mini PC then your NAS can be older and really underpowered since it’s literally just housing your HDDs and not running compute heavy tasks.

You might need a bit more horsepower if you want to use Immich AI and PaperlessNGX AI.

eBay has been great and secondhand tech is worth taking the (small) risk on for the big savings. Get an old NAS that still gets firmware updates. Synology has worked great for me since it handles reverse proxy safely without me trying to learn that myself and doing a bad job to leave my server exposed and vulnerable. Get a mini PC suitable for your needs. I got a 12th gen Intel one earlier this year for £230, many companies dump “old” stock that’s perfectly functional. Look out for which CPU has a good enough iGPU for your needs if you need something like Jellyfin video transcoding.

I don’t plan on having more than 7-8 services running: Immich, Nextcloud+office, firefly, audiobookshelf, paperless and a maybe few more if they’re useful.

This will change when you get confidence and start realising how much good stuff is out there.

I’m a noob with this stuff who has recently self learned some of this and got a decent server setup running. Feel free to DM if you want detail about my beginner resources, how, what and any other questions.

I started with a Synology NAS. I don’t know about your specific NAS, but NAS hardware can be underpowered and quickly becomr too underpowered for the stuff you want to deploy.

People online recommended a mini PC for and keeping the NAS as just a NAS. I thought I better double check what’s suitable for my needs…R.Pi, DIY build server computer, NUC , Unraid, TrueNAS, HexOS, etc.

So I put in loads of work to come round to realising the initial recommendations was correct. I’ve kept my Synology for only NAS and use a dedicated mini PC. I’ve put Debian on it as my server OS. No RAID configurations, but critical data is backed up across 2 to 3 different devices and media.

Super happy (and quite proud) of my setup. It is slowly expanding.

I would recommend taking it slow, document steps you take (because you will fuck up and need to redo things), backup all important data and keep it completely detached from the devices you’re tinkering with, find suitable and appropriate beginner guides. Don’t go underpowered, and don’t get caught up with very advanced user setups with huge overkill.

It really has been a lot of fun. Welcome inside the rabbit hole.

A lot of things I’ve done may well be very poor practice. But at least I’ve got this thing off the ground and am learning from there. If I couldn’t make a start then I wouldn’t go down this rabbit hole at all in the first place. Without trying, implementing, breaking and making mistakes…it’s not like I would have browsed Stack Overflow for months. I have no programming or PC qualifications. Self teaching ain’t easy. AI did a lot more heavy lifting initially. Now it mostly double checks my YAML draft and makes sense of error logs so I can be pointed in the right direct to know where to even start reading.

Everyone’s wrong here. New users should try to look up some basics, and existing advanced users should tolerate beginner difficulties and not say anything if they can’t support and welcome the beginners. It would be perfectly acceptable to have a self hosted noobs community so advanced users are isolated from noobs if they want to be.

Frankly, this has been a longstanding barrier for me in adopting Linux and self hosting. Communities can be really unhelpful. It’s not like hobbyists are starting with reading an organised textbook. Knowledge is picked up piecemeal and sometimes there are glaring holes in beginner knowledge. For Linux adoption and self hosting, AI has helped me a hell of a lot. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without AI. In my mind, this is a perfect use for AI. I can ask my dumb beginner questions without annoying AI, and it’s a very low risk situation for when AI gets things completely wrong and it doesnt really matter much. Also I find it amusing that I used the big tech company’s tools to move to platforms that deny big tech companies from exploiting my data, which is now safely local.

Isn’t this something Linus Media Group is focusing on by investing in HexOS…lower the barrier for entry. I see no sense in turning away people who are interested in privacy and security. Communities should really have a “gates open, come on in” attitude.

For anyone interested: emulation works great in modern phones. Eden emulator runs Switch games and some work very well with just touchscreen controls (e.g. Into the Breach).

If you’re ok with on screen controllers or with carrying around something like an 8bit Zero 2or Micro, then you could emulate a mind-blowing number of consoles and games.

I’ve shoved my Switch to the back of a cupboard somewhere and don’t use that hardware at all. I use Eden emulator to play Switch games on my Steam Deck and my Retroid Pocket 5, and also my PC (if my kids want their save game progress there). Syncthing is set up on my home server and all these devices. The save data gets synced across all devices. I’ve been loving it. I’ve ditched the shitty Nintendo hardware and always refused to pay for Switch online since it didn’t work for a bunch of games anyway. The emulated games get better performance with better screens and controllers on these devices, and all games sync reliably at no extra cost.

I’ve got Switch games on my phone as well (Into the Breach works great with touch controls alone), but I haven’t figured out synchronising save data from here since Android locked down app data folders.

I can give you more details or resources with instructions if you want, but this won’t apply to actual Nintendo hardware and certainly not Switch 2.

Normies don’t get it. Privacy means nothing to most normies. I tell them about things they would understand an appreciate:

I don’t need to pay for the following anymore because I have my personal version of Netflix, Spotify, Dropbox, Google photos, etc.

I can tell them about a home server also saving me from Onenote, Google Calendar, etc as well; but they tend not to understand this and say “but that’s free anyway”. In which case it becomes a more prolonged conversation of trying to explain why privacy and data ownership are important.

There’s also the hobby/interest/learning aspect of this. But even my wife sees what I do and says she doesn’t understand how I can stand troubleshooting server problems; because she gets hugely triggered if tech doesn’t immediately work as intended. Tinkering and troubleshooting tech is most people’s idea of hell (the equivalent of saying it is fun to have to unclog a public toilet).

Also I can get services not possible otherwise, like Nintendo Switch save game sync across devices (emulation on a number of devices and Syncthing with save data folders).

How do you use it in you setup?

Others explained what it is. To implement it, I basically followed this guide: https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/qbittorrent-with-gluetun-vpn-in-container-manager-on-a-synology-nas/