My 2 cents:
Simple, no domain required stuff:
- Pi-hole for self-hosted DNS: https://pi-hole.net/
- Navidrome for self-hosted music server: https://www.navidrome.org/ (best to pair this with an external portable HDD/SSD for music storage)
- Set up syncthing on it and use it for automatic file back-up: https://syncthing.net/ (that external HDD/SSD will come in handy again).
More advanced, should pair with a domain:
- Nextcloud for your own personal cloud/calendar/etc: https://nextcloud.com/ - it won't be blazing fast but it will work well, I had it running on a pi for a while.
- Simple web hosting - the pi is great for hosting low traffic stuff like blogs etc.
Seconding Syncthing! You don't need a rpi to get started, but it's fantastic having it around as the always-on node you can use to sync multipe devices without them being online at the same time.
For Pihole it's probably overkill. I run mine on Pi Zeros.
I am currently running
- Nextcloud: slow, but great for Calendar or Notes
- Gonic
- Airsonic Refix
- transfer.sh
- FileBrowser
- Conduit
- Cinny
- Mosquitto
- Prometheus
- Grafana
The last three are quite niche. I use Prometheus + Grafana for Monitoring the Pi itself and for displaying MQTT Stats. Since upgrading to SSDs performance is actually quite good, especially when taking power usage into account.
Jellyfin, I've run mine for a couple years now(ever since the pi4 came out) and it's been great. The only thing to consider is turning off video transcoding, its not able to to transcode anything HD or over. Other than that, its great. I use it for videos and music.
Best is so subjective.
I am running pivpn, pihole, all the arrs, jellyfin, gitea and rundeck.
What do you want to use it for? Like software dev or something to host like next cloud or whatever?
Probably more software dev.
I had jellyfin, arrs, wireguard and a lot more, but adding nextcloud was too much for 4GB. It would start with 2.7 GB used, but building until it OOMs. Also rpi cant transcode, but its perfect for direct play. I upgraded my server to PC version once I had to upgrade storage. Running multiple disks from rpi requires extra cables, devices and then its not cheap small factor anymore :)
Now I have raspberry for 2nd pihole, 2nd wireguard, duckdns, upsnap (WOL) and filebrowser
- Home Assistant
- Minecraft ( gotta go with something like PaperMC server but even core server will run if you setup a drive on USB
- PiHole (but as I commented elsewhere, it's overkill and you can use Pi Zero's for this easily).
- OctoPi (3d Printing)
https://github.com/marchah/pi-htpc-download-box this is great! I have a Plex server running on my shield pro
I have 3 rpi4 4gb doing job that I use practically every day.
Pi-1
- wireguard
Pi-2 portainer agent
- bedrock Minecraft server
Pi-3 portainer main running omv6
- Kavita - amazing comic book organiser and reader
- emby - Plex and jellyfish both crapped out, apparently due to library size corrupting the dB, emby is very nice though.
- homepage - nice homepage for everything
- paperless (5 containers!) - just installed document organiser
- metube - great yt-dl web wrapper
The raspi is either a small hacking tool, or a learning tool. It certainly isn't ideal for things like nextcloud, but it is by far the coolest and most fun way to learn Linux and self hosted services. I ran emulation station, did nextcloud, pihole, pivpn, fail2ban, did robotics, learned python. I now use it for one thing - pivpn (Wireguard) and pihole to access my home network remotely
I originally got it for some robotic projects, but ended up not needing it. Thought maybe I could put it to good use, so here I am.
Setting up your own wireguard vpn at home is a great option. Look up pivpn. I recommend setting the port to 443 or network time (123) to spoof your traffic and have it work everywhere
Immich, whoogle, syncthing, openmediavault
The pi4 especially is great for proof of concept or MVP testing, but I often migrate to VMs on my proxmox hypervisor once something becomes critical. I started Shinobi, pihole, and home assistant on a pi4.
I have Adguard and Kavita on it.
Update: I forgot I have Wireguard too.
Currently using portainer to run
- freshrss
- syncthing
- samba share While plugged into an external 3tb expansion drive. I want to do more but i only have a 2gb version so im afraid i might be pushing it.
It honeslty depends on what you do and want. I use syncthing instead of cloud services to bavk up everything i need and because i play emulated games a lot on both pc and my steam deck i can essentially have cloud saves for them.
