We need about 300 ducks in this picture bashing each other because each one thinks it it superior.

I would absolutely look into it. Many years ago when Docker emerged, I did not understand it and called it "Hipster shit". But also a lot of people around me who used Docker at that time did not understand it either. Some lost data, some had servicec that stopped working and they had no idea how to fix it.

Years passed and Containers stayed, so I started to have a closer look at it, tried to understand it. Understand what you can do with it and what you can not. As others here said, I also had to learn how to troubleshoot, because stuff now runs inside a container and you don´t just copy a new binary or library into a container to try to fix something.

Today, my homelab runs 50 Containers and I am not looking back. When I rebuild my Homelab this year, I went full Docker. The most important reason for me was: Every application I run dockerized is predictable and isolated from the others (from the binary side, network side is another story). The issues I had earlier with my Homelab when running everything directly in the Box in Linux is having problems when let´s say one application needs PHP 8.x and another, older one still only runs with PHP 7.x. Or multiple applications have a dependency of a specific library when after updating it, one app works, the other doesn´t anymore because it would need an update too. Running an apt upgrade was always a very exciting moment... and not in a good way. With Docker I do not have these problems. I can update each container on its own. If something breaks in one Container, it does not affect the others.

Another big plus is the Backups you can do. I back up every docker-compose + data for each container with Kopia. Since barely anything is installed in Linux directly, I can spin up a VM, restore my Backups withi Kopia and start all containers again to test my Backup strategy. Stuff just works. No fiddling with the Linux system itself adjusting tons of Config files, installing hundreds of packages to get all my services up and running again when I have a hardware failure.

I really started to love Docker, especially in my Homelab.

Oh, and you would think you have a big resource usage when everything is containerized? My 50 Containers right now consume less than 6 GB of RAM and I run stuff like Jellyfin, Pi-Hole, Homeassistant, Mosquitto, multiple Kopia instances, multiple Traefik Instances with Crowdsec, Logitech Mediaserver, Tandoor, Zabbix and a lot of other things.

One reason is because I can. And because of that, I tend to host things myself which I can. This generates cost and work to maintain it on my side and not for others. A few less users from our household on a public instance means more room for others who are just not as tech-savvy and have no other choice as to rely on public instances. So it is a mix of respecting other peoples time, effort and money and a part is just the nerd that wants to find out how it works and how it´s done :-)

I am looking at those kind of devices for a few weeks now because I need to replace my DD-WRT Router with something more powerful and reliable. I am aiming for those Mini PCs / Appliances with 2+ 2.5GbE network ports and went through dozens of "manufacturers" (many are just putting their label on it) and read hundreds of Forum posts, watched videos etc.

To me it comes down, that they do not differ that much and on my journey so far, these are the things I discovered:

• Many manufacturers still implement previous CPU generations. This one has a recent N100, so that´s good. The newer gens are usually more power efficient and produce less heat, so you have higher chances to run them fanless without burning your house down.
• If you want 2.5GbE, it is almost always Intel i225 for the older models and i226-V for the newer ones. And those seem to have issues with ASPM, which you need to turn off, depending how you plan to use them. And this adds a few extra Watts.
• With many "nameless" China boxes that are actually tested by people in Forums / Videos etc. it happens often, that they have to mod them. They either add fans to them because they get unreasonably hot, or the internals are sloppy built, so that hot components do not even touch the case properly to transmit the head. So be prepared to mod them if you get one you did not found a thorough review yet.
• Some build their Boxes still with DDR-4 memory, although they are on a new platform that would support DDR-5. Sometimes you see this in the product description, sometimes you see it when you bought it and opened the box.
• For many offers I have seen there is no information about the BIOS/EFI and what you can do there. I have seen / read tests, where you could barely change anything in the BIOS/EFI and are stuck with what the manufacturer configured for you.
• With the "nameless" boxes, the biggest issue I have is, that they do not even have proper descriptions of the built in components on their product page. The place where they advertise their product. If this information is not even there, I suspect long-time support and build quality is not better either.
• Sometimes the RAM is fixed and you can not change it, but with the sloppy product pages, you sometimes can not see this or it is not that obvious, so pay attention to that if you plan to use it for a long time and might want to upgrade the RAM.
• Sometimes you find the exact same hardware just relabeled. I looked at the Thomas Krenn LESv4 for example and found out that it is from Iwill. This is one example where I thought I get it from a German manufacturer and pay a bit extra to support them, but it's just a relabel from a Chinese company. That's not bad of course, just a heads up if you insist on buying something that is not coming from China... which is near impossible anyway in my opinion, because what kind of Electronics is not from there nowadays ;-)
• I am following Hardkernel for a while and their new H4 Series seems to tick all the boxes for me at the moment... apart from one: The Case! But they announced a "GC-Style" Case that is injection molded and will post pictures in 2 weeks, so I will wait to see how it looks and how it is built. I love how they nerd out on their Product pages. There is hardly anything you can not find there. They use current technology and offer it for a very fair price. They also seem to pay attention that you have plenty of room to tinker with the settings in their BIOS/EFI and they seem to put quite some though into how they build their stuff, so it also consumes the least amount of energy (which should mean less heat) than others. They even have the guts to host their own Forum, which is a big thing nowadays when you have to fear one Shitstorm after another if you do something that one person does not like. Their H4+ with the Netboard (adds 4 more NICs) and a SSD in a cozy case would be sweet, so I hope the new case they will release soon fits my needs.

That's my 2 cents for today. Sorry for the long post, but since this is a topic I am doing research for myself to get me a good, fast, low energy, low heat hardware for a new OPNsense Firewall :-)

That looks like a missed opportunity to me not using fedd.it :-)

I am not sure if it will help you know more people, but Deep Rock Galactic has one of the most friendly Multiplayer experiences I ever had. You will find a lemon from time to time, but in general it is a great community as long as you Rock and Stone when someone Rock and Stones to you (you will understand) :-)

Edit: And, probably not a coincidence, DRG has awesome Developers and the general tone of the game is just... wholesome I think is the right word :-)

We follow the principle of doing one thing well instead of all things mediocre, so we use 2 solutions for what you asked. As others in the thread, we do use Tandoor, but only for Recipes and Meal Planning. It does this execeptionally well, but the shopping list part is fitting to our style of shopping.

As a shopping list, we use David Shays Groceries / Specifically Clementines. Why?

• It works offline when you are in one of those huge buildings that work like a faradays cage and you do not have reception anymore.
• It lets my partner attach a picture to a list item, so I can find that specific cheese when I am standing clueless in front of those shelves with 500 different cheese brands and that helps me find the right item before the shop closes.
• It works exactly the way we shop. We always arranged items in the order they are in the shop when you work through the shop from entry to exit. That is super efficient.
• It supports aisles. That means your items are assigned to an aisle. The super cool feature here is, that you can rearrange the isles for each shop. Veggies are at the entrance of Shop A, but at the middle of Shop B? Just arrange the isle for Shop A to the start of the list and to the middle of Shop B. Since all items are connected to an isle, they move with the aisle. This way you never have to turn around in a shop to get "those other things". You just walk from entry to exit in one line and be done with it.
• With this software I never forgot to buy something I did not find in Shop A. How this software does it is that you create list groups that contain lists for every shop that fits. For example you group food shops together, or shops for gardening stuff. Within the list groups, you have your items. And when putting an item on a list, you can select on which list it should appear. Now when you put your favourite cheese on the List of Shop A and B and you bought it on Shop A, it gets ticked off on Shop B too. Or the other way round, I think you get the idea.
• I have to repeat that it works offline. A shopping list is useless if you can not use it when you are shopping.
• Accidentially ticked off an item because, well... touchscreens and you do not know what it was? No problem. Ticked off items just move down that list and you can pick it up again. With other apps stuff just disappears or gets send back to the global item list and now you do not have any idea what you missed. Not so with "Specifically Clementines".
• It never let us down. It always worked, whether offline or online without any hiccups.

There is more, but this post got too long already. It also has User Management, Permissions and Live Sync. Yes, my Partner can see live when I tick of items on the list and can put stuff on the list while I am shopping :-)

Everything in that software feels like it was created by a person that goes actually shopping.

It has a very good web interface (which also has the offline mode AFAIK) and a very good Android App.

Does it look fancy? No. Has it everything we ever searched for in a shopping list app? Absolutely!

Yeah, they had the better technology (Google Video was very bad) and Google had the money.

Ja, oder "er wurde geheist" :-)

Since we use Nextcloud, we just use Talk. It works well enough for us, but you should also host a TURN/STUN Server with that.

I was just looking for cheap backup space recently and Hetzners Storage Box BX21 is 13€ per month for 5 TB, 20 Snapshots and unlimited traffic. I did not compare the service with backblaze yet, though.

I am really looking forward to the changes and can't wait to try them out.

Oh yes! Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice was absolutely fantastic with headphones. Probably the best audio experience I ever had in a game.

My impression in the betas when fighting alongside strangers was that everyone gets his own stuff. At least in normal play. I never actively created a party, so that might be different. But even in D3 everyone got his own loot, so I assume it is the same.

I run Nextcloud for many, many years. I hosted it for a very long time at Hetzners second lowest tier of Webspace they rent. It was not very fast there (you get what you pay for), but fast enough for our need here. Later I moved it to an Azure VM and after that to my Homeserver where it runs blazingly fast, especially since the last updates they pushed out.

In all that time I never reinstalled. I just upgraded to the newer versions when they were out. The only times I had problems upgrading was when I was hosting at the cheap Webspace instance at Hetzner and an upgrade process took longer than the PHP timeout my very cheap hosting instance provided. So it was never a fault of Nextcloud, but just that I hosted it on basically the cheapest hosting plan I could find.

We use it for file sharing, calendar + contacts (+ Sync with DAVx), Notes and of course Talk. For talk to make full use of Voice + Video calls, you should have a TURN Server, but if you do not use that (if you just text) it was running great even on the Webspace instance at Hetzner.

We are very happy in our family that it exists, that it is free and that it serves us well since many years.

El Camino!

As far as I understand, at least the Text Data (posts?) is replicated to your instance. So if you are only 1 person using your own instance, I think it should neither hurt not help the network. But if there are 2 or more people using your instance (Family / Friends) and they are interested in some of the same content, they will fetch that content from your server and not from the original servers (minus the pictures AFAIK). So it causes a bit less stress on the server that hosts the content your users are consuming.

I am all new to this, so take this with a grain of salt.

Diablo 4 does not have couch coop on PC, which I find infuriating. I am not sure about 3, but I think it does not have one too, only on consoles.

Thank you :-)

To the Bone!