According to JerryRigEverything, they actually run you through a mac mini on their server farm. He said he has info about that confirmed by the devs. Not sure what’s true, but i usually trust him, seems like a good guy.

I’m not hosting a lot, just things i wanted to have in order to replace having a pc with installed apps. I want stuff to be a available on a web browser.

Some of the things i host:

NGINX Proxy manager - pretty much required Joplin - notes, apps for all platforms available Wiki.js - to replace Joplin, i don’t like installed apps HomeAssistant - home automation Mealie - converted my family paper cookbook Paperless-ngx - documents organization Mumble - voice chat server for gaming and meetings NextCloud - pretty much self explanatory Jellyfin - i want to be able to play media that is stored on the NAS, family photos, videos MQTT - self explanatory ZigbeeToMQTT - connect zigbee devices to MQTT Grafana - pretty graphs WireGuard - VPN access Trillium - to replace joplin for actual note taking Homepage - to display and organize all services VS Code Server - self explanatory OctoPrint - printer management Whoogle - i don’t like ads and “algorithms”

My total TDP is 15 watts. Idle is about 5W. I can’t imagine what i would do with a higher power consuming machine, it wouldn’t be financially feasible.

That widely depends on what you are using it for. I think it’s amazing.

I can buy a computer for $500 with 8 cores, 32GB ram, 512GB NVME storage. I can install free open source linux distribution on it that manages virtual machines. It can run dozens of containerized free/open source applications on it.

Then, i can use my domain name and freely available services like letsencrypt and cloudflare to make it securely available on the internet.

Internet is what you make of it, always has been.

If you only rely to 3rd party websites then you’re missing out on a lot of usability.

I guess it depends on when you stared using it.

Today, a lot if people take a lot of things for granted.

I still remember the days of waiting for a website to load, making myself coffee while it’s loading.

Now i can stream realtime 4k video of my house on my phone, served by my computer.

I can game with friends conencted to my voice chat server that i own and has awesome voice quality and low latency.

I can have all my files available wherever i am, instantly.

I can forget my phone and my laptop, login to my server at a friend’s computer and do whatever i need to do.

All that wouldn’t be possible if the internet was stuck in the 90’s.

Newpipe doesn’t have a version for iOS, the newpipe team decided it won’t support the os because it heavily relies on android api. Not to mention that you probably couldn’t easily install it even if it exists. Youtube without ads is available via safari though.

Nothing wrong with differences. I just wanted to point out that many of the things i thought i would be missing, i’m not, either because there is an alternative or because it’s in the os by default.

To answer your last question, an example, i paid more money to get less enjoyment from one of the computers i use in the “home lab”. I could’ve spun up yet another VM for some services, for free, but i decided to purchase a dedicated machine. It had to be small tho, so the only real option i had was the Intel NUC.

It costs triple of the DIY version, not to mention infinitely more than a “free” VM, but it was the right choice. CPU is soldered, you have to buy M.2 storage because no sata ports, and it takes SO-DIMM. I “could” buy a cheap AMD CPU and motherboard and reuse multiple sticks of RAM and SSDs laying around in the lab, but the power consumption and form factor were more important for the use case.

Slowly but surely i’m getting on the same boat. If i lost my phone tomorrow and couldn’t afford a new one, i would much rather get a second-hand iphone from a year or three ago than a cheap android

I guess you should look into nextcloud and/or synology drive, because they do exactly that.

You can use it as a “cloud”, where the files you are using are downloaded locally and then updated if you made changes, or you can just sync everything.

For me, i have some folders i need always available, internet or no internet, and some that i don’t care about as much. And that’s how it’s configured, it syncs the stuff i need, it leaves the stuff i don’t.

I guess what i wanted to ask by creating the post is exactly what you are saying.

Why would you want to jailbreak a phone or sideload apps? Maybe you don’t have to? I was blown away by the amount of apps and features baked into the iOS and macOS, i had no idea that was the case.

And you can’t even know if you don’t try. Look at the amount of people saying, for example, you can’t have adblock on safari (you can), or that there are no automations on ios (there are).

I’m not trying to preach or to convert anyone, i’m just saying that i’ve been living under a rock and didn’t know about any features the ios/macos offer.

Also, apple products work just fine, sometimes better, with non-apple hardware and software.

Bluetooth devices especially.

Good for you. I switched to libre or at least alternative software which is (almost all) cross-platform compatible. I replaced almost everything apart from some niche software that only works on windows.

The day i can game on linux is the day windows goes to the VM just for that few pieces of software required for my business.

That said, mac comes with most of the every-day items preinstalled. Mail, spreadsheets and the likes. Windows on the other hand - not so much. Windows mail app can’t hold a candle to the mac app or even the ios app.

You need to pay for office for that. Same on android. I can do 99% of stuff without installing any app from the app store.

I tried. Don’t get me wrong, but if a couple of people can make a better software than a huge company then why am i giving the company my money in the first place. Unfortunately, i don’t have much free time anymore, not as much i would like, and certainly a lot less than i used to have 5-10 years ago.

I would love if the guys who make custom roms could make a phone, but sadly, that probably won’t happen. And i hate that all the phones are locked in. I wish a phone could be like a pc, where you can install whatever OS you like.

Hardware manufacturers make that impossible. The company that makes snapdragon is responsible for all the drivers and compatibility. Samsung certainly won’t open up their chips and drivers as well. Apple is the same.

Until we get something like a linux phone, everyone will fight tooth and nail for their slice of pie.

Hell, look at linux drivers on the x64/86 (nvidia).

Look at microsoft ditching 99% of CPUs on win11 launch.

Look at apple with their “macOS is for macs only”.

Software manufacturers are to blame as well. Why no office on linux but they support macos? Why no adobe products on linux? Why not games on linux? (I know it’s better now but still, very few big players) Banking software? Windows only. Manufacturing software? Almost all windows only.

OS choice has to be on the person using the computer, not some company.

It’s time for standardized computing.

I understand that you can’t write all the software that has been written again, but you can at least make the new software compatible.

I had a pleasure of replacing a CPU on an Acer laptop. It refused to work. I have it on video, 3 or 5 minutes after boot (can’t remember, but it was consistent) it would shut down.

Later, i found out that even though you can replace the CPU in that laptop, Intel has made it so that if that unit wasn’t configured with that CPU when you bought it, it would simply shut down after X minutes.

Can’t recall the name for that “feature” unfortunately.

I think there’s a good reason behind the sales numbers, to be honest.

No need to wonder! Better to cut them off and sleep calmly if you ask me.

That’s exactly how i feel, apart from the premium androids, because even though i paid the premium price, it never felt as a good phone. Fast, maybe, well built, not really, and the apps are the same no matter what you paid so it kind of feels like you got ripped off.

I’m salty as hell because deep down i really want android phones to be great.

I gave up with trying to have serious conversations about not-serious topics with people in my life, it isn’t worth the time. I would much rather enjoy a meal or a drink and talk about something that actually requires some critical thinking than to just have piss contest on whose phone is better or whose car is faster, if you know what i mean.

I guess if that particular app doesn’t work then it doesn’t. But i have zero issues with syncing the Bitwarden vault, or Synology drive, Nextcloud, or Synology Photos. Maybe the issue is with Syncthing.

Unfortunately security updates are really low on the update tree. I am glad that they exist, don’t get me wrong, but i would much rather want an actual update along with the security update, that brings in new features, fixes bugs etc.

As for a midrange phone, you can buy a non-pro iPhone from a last generation for a steep discount in comparison with the latest model. Not for £250 though. There’s also the SE phone that’s the cheapest if you don’t need all the bells and whistles.

I would disagree that (every) cheap phone is usable. Depends on what you do with it. If it’s for making calls and texting, then fine, but i don’t think anyone uses their phone just for that nowadays. Usable as in it powers on and accepts input, yes, but usable as in using it daily for a few years… Not so much.

Some of my colleagues have cheap androids from their employer as a work phone and they are absolute trash, waste of energy and resources.

Don’t get me wrong, people who can’t afford an expensive phone have options now that didn’t exist before the advent of Xiaomi and i’m very glad for that. But i think it’s wasteful (resource-wise) for a company to provide cheap androids that break after a year only to replace them with another cheap android for one more year. That helps noone, just generates more e-waste.

I prefer my own intelligence even if flawed. I think that’s the beauty of it. Nothing against AI, but i don’t like the idea of running thoughts through an AI for a post on the internet, feels weird.

Yeah it looks like i need new friends, but that gets kinda hard when you’re older

I’m using nextcloud and synology drive (both available from the internet) with SMB fall-back through wireguard in case i need access to other folders on the server.

I don’t know about the support part, i was on call with support for the first few days about basic functionality regarding the phone and the laptop and they were very polite and helpful.

Also, there’s a easily accessible user manual for every device and every function on their website, something that can’t be said for a lot of other brands.