As others have said, Nextcloud for files/calendar and Tailscale for VPN is your answer.

Nextcloud can be installed in several ways, one of which is Docker Compose. Docker Compose is flexible but requires learning a bit, although you can use it for most self-hosted software.

I have a T630 as well. It’s currently running 26 Docker containers without issue. I love it.

I can share the script on GitHub if anyone is interested. Among other things, it converts funds to their value at the time of the transaction and adds additional transactions to reflect capital gains and losses. This allows Metabase to accurately report net worth over time.

Docker + Caddy (for reverse proxy) fits most use cases IMO. I really like this person’s approach: https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker. They use Docker networks to avoid unnecessary port mapping - it’s a very clean method.

I really want this too. Neither Actual nor Firefly III support stocks/funds (open issues for Actual and for Firefly III.

I use GnuCash for my transactions, which I manually export from my accounts as QFX files. Although GnuCash has support for tracking fund values and generating reports, I do this with a custom Python script and Metabase instead.

We’ve integrated a new REST API and embedded web server directly into the pihole-FTL binary. This eliminates the need for lighttpd and PHP, reducing the installation footprint and boosting performance.

Very nice!

Stalwart is gaining momentum. I haven’t used it, but it’s worth a look. https://stalw.art/

• Docker: You can practice on your main computer before complicating things with networking.
• How to set up a reverse proxy: DNS, certificates, etc. I recommend Caddy.
• Backups: If you use Docker Volumes, make sure you back those up too and test the backups.

To self-host, you do not need to know how to code.

I host Caddy and Vaultwarden using Docker. The traffic into the reverse proxy, Caddy, works over port 443, not 1808 or 1443. Using the Caddyfile, you can tell Caddy which port to send the traffic over.

Caddy docker-compose.yml

services:
  caddy:
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"

Caddyfile, although there are other ways to do this

*.example.com {
        @vaultwarden host vaultwarden.example.com
        handle @vaultwarden {
                reverse_proxy :11808
        }

Vaultwarden docker-compose.yml

services:
  vaultwarden:
    ports:
      - 11808:80

I do similar with a shortcut on my phone to a NocoDB Form.

If you decide to not got the YunoHost route, I like the way this guide did reverse proxies with Caddy: https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker.

I think it’s cool you’re trying to find ways to get into this. If the goal is to learn, why not deploy the services on your laptop? They won’t be available when the computer is off of course, but you would still get the full experience. Even a low-spec laptop will be better than a cheap VPS.

As others said, both Firefly III and Actual Budget do not support stocks. I wish they did, but I guess I’ll have to stick with GnuCash + Metabase for now.

I don’t use NocoDB in an app. I use it as an alternative to a spreadsheet, especially with its web forms and relational columns.

For development, you would probably want to use their REST API.

https://docs.nocodb.com/category/rest-apis

NocoDB is awesome, although admittedly I haven’t tried Baserow. The “group by,” Kanban, and form features in NocoDB make data entry easy from mobile and nice to sort on desktop.

Definitely check this summary out: https://meichthys.github.io/foss_photo_libraries/. Everyone’s use case and priorities will be a little different, but I’d vote for Immich as a Google Photos replacement that looks nice and is very easy to use. I was awestruck by the facial and object recognition, which wasn’t even a feature I particularly cared about.

I’ve seen a lot of people recommending Teamgroup. They tend to be cheaper than Samsung but with supposedly better quality than other cheap options. I haven’t looked up any studies yet though.

I have this scanner and agree it works great, although there may be cheaper options out there that also work well.

FTP worked well out of the box. For SFTP on Arch Linux, I had to follow the troubleshooting instructions here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Very_Secure_FTP_Daemon#LIST_command_resets_connection.

Nice list. Another, similar repo, also quite opinionated: https://github.com/DoTheEvo/selfhosted-apps-docker. I’m not the author, I’ve just found it really helpful at times.

I had the same problem as OP. My solution was to port forward to my server but then block connections from all IP addresses accept from my work, which I added to an allowlist.

It’s working well so far, but I think the Cloudflare tunnel is the better option.