VPN is the way to go if you’re not sharing it with a bunch of people

Thanks, I’ll have a look!

I currently have some notes in Nextcloud notes which I quite like. I don’t need anything too fancy. Markdown is nice to have, but not required if there is some ui way to make checkboxes. If I remember correctly, in the nextcloud notes app you have to set the folder that it uses. Which makes shared notes impractical, if not impossible.

Because of this, I still have several notes shared with my wife in Google keep for things like shopping lists. I’m tempted to test out the shopping list function in home assistant, but not sure if it will fit the needs. Would be nice to find something that covers all my use cases in one app.

KDE Connect as another uas suggested.

Only buggy issue I have is that I use a VPN on my phone to access my local network when away from home. I have the VPN set up with Hairpinning so I don’t have to disconnect from the VPN while at home which occasionally causes issues on my steam deck as the version of KDE Connect on the steam deck does not appear to have an easy way to connect to device via IP. On my desktop and laptop I run Pop!_OS and use GS Connect which gives me an option to connect to device via IP so I have less issues with my phone just randomly not appearing on those computers.

Back in the day I ran a pfsense VM on ESXi before broadcom bought them. I found it easier to just purchase a cheap Unifi AP and spin up a VM for the Unifi controller app (I’m assuming you can still run that on your own hardware, its been a few years). I think I got a UAP 6 lite or something like that. If I recall it was about $130 CAD with the PoE injector.

Techincally its not ideal to run your firewall on the same device as other things, but I never had any issues.

Also, does the mini PC have multiple NICs? You will have a bad time if it does not.

Plus one for the gli.net router. I’ve got the Beryl AX and it’s great. Ended up going with a wireguard VPN rather than tailscale, but either would work.

The snap version of nextcloud has been pretty solid for me, except for the time that I installed the nextcloud backup app.

If at all possible, do not expose things like ssh, RDP, etc to the internet. Use traditional VPN or something like tail scale. Just because ssh is on a different port than normal doesnt mean an attacker couldn’t figure out that your running ssh on port 335.

Wish I had the time/energy to host this much… Currently I’m running

• Plex
• Nextcloud (snap on ubuntu VM because its easy)
• pihole
• pivpn

I’m also running Jellyfin and Navidrome, in an attempt to determine if they are good alternatives to Plex for like 6 months at this point. See comments above about time/energy.

Wish I had the time/energy to host this much… Currently I’m running

• Plex
• Nextcloud (snap on ubuntu VM because its easy)
• pihole
• pivpn

I’m also running Jellyfin and Navidrome, in an attempt to determine if they are good alternatives to Plex for like 6 months at this point. See comments above about time/energy.

I’m actually hosting things on my 2 year old gaming pc (which is no longer used for gaming) and using my 8 year old laptop daily… How the turn tables.

If you’re not confident in database management, there is always the Snap version. I know Snap gets a lot of hate, and you do lose some ability to tinker with Nextcloud configuration, but its been pretty solid for me.

Can’t speak to OP’s reasons, and I am currently torn whether to switch over to jellyfin or not. I am currently running both Plex and Jellyfin side by side with the same media libraries.

I am annoyed by the fact that Plex requires that you log in and authenticate against Plex’s own servers to view your own media. I know technically you can set up local access if Plex’s servers are not available, but you don’t get user account restrictions, watch history, etc when you are not able to authenticate against Plex’s servers. If I have an experience that is that degraded, then I consider the service useless unless you are able to access Plex’s servers.

Plex’s recommendations are stupid and annoying. I am running Plex because I want an easy way to enjoy my own media. The other night, my wife was looking to watch a TV series that I have on my Plex server, which I have watched from my server in the past. When she searched for it, Plex was attempting to get her to watch the series on Hulu (a service that not only do we not subscribe to, but is not even available in our country). We ended up having to browse our TV Library to find it since no search I did would find it.

Plex’s recent moves toward monitization are concerning. I understand that Plex is a private company and needs to make money. I am not a fan of the way that they appear to be doing it. It seems like Plex likely will (if they are not already) sell search and watch data to the bigger streaming giants. Maybe the gave away too many lifetime Plexpasses?

That’s my two cents.