this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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I have been wanting to self-host recently I have an old laptop it's a Toshiba satellite m100-221 sitting around it only has 4gb of ram, but I don't know what is a good starting point for an OS for my home lab I discovered yunohost but heard mixed opinions about it when searching I would like lemmy's opinion on a good OS for a beginner wanting to start a home lab I would prefer a simple solution like yunohost but would like it to be configurable it's fine if it needs a bit of tinkering.

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[–] darkan15@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

XKCD 2501 applies in this thread.

I agree, there are so many layers of complexity in self-hosting, that most of us tend to forget, when the most basic thing would be a simple bare metal OS and Docker

you'll probably want to upgrade the ram soon

His hardware has a max ram limit of 4, so the only probable upgrade he could do is a SATA SSD, even so I'm running around 15 docker containers on similar specs so as a starting point is totally fine.

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

simple bare metal OS and Docker

That’s exactly what the XKCD is about, what you wrote is just like the chemical formulas they are talking about in the comic for your average person

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Agreed.

I've been using Linux for years.

I've done minor coding.

I've even installed Adguard and a VPN on a router.

Built my own water cooled PC.

I still don't quite understand what Docker is or does, or containerized stuff. I've avoided most networking stuff since XP, and it's basically a completely other field of tech as far as I'm concerned, like Math is to Physics.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

I use VMs instead. I understand those and can pretend the benefits matter.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Surely most basic is an old computer and double clicking minecraft_server.jar? Pretty sure that is the first server I ran for people outside of my LAN actually.

[–] darkan15@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, I started the same, hosting LAN parties with Minecraft and Counter Strike 1.6 servers on my own Windows machine at the time.

But what happens when you want to install some app/service that doesn't have a native binary installer for your OS, you will not only have to learn how to configure/manage said app/service, you will also need to learn one or multiple additional layers.

I could have said "simple bare metal OS and a binary installer" and for some people it would sound as Alien, and others would be nitpicky about it as they are with me saying docker (not seeing that this terminology I used was not for a newbie but for them), If the apps you want to self-host are offered with things like Yunohost or CasaOS, that's great, and there are apps/services that can be installed directly on your OS without much trouble, that's also great. But there are cases where you will need to learn something extra (and for me that extra was Docker).