I don't see any mention of games so far.
A minecraft server is always a good time with friends, and there are hundreds of other game servers you can self host.
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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I'm interested in which game servers you can host yourself...
Can you give me a few examples or a link to a list?
https://linuxgsm.com/ could interest you!
Here is a list of games they support. Could give you some ideas: https://linuxgsm.com/servers/
An open tor exit node, a proxy to a pedopornographic website, a guide to mass shootings, a wiki on how to get untraced firearms, or a Minecraft server
spoiler
/s obviously
But on a more serious note, hosting things like StirlingPDF, Nextcloud, Lufi (for encrypted file uploads), or even a mailcow instance is nice
Personally:
Nextcloud (file backup and so much more, I use it to backup files from my computer. Might explore some of the other features soon)
Immich (image backup, I use it to back up photos from my camera + phone)
Radicale (CalDAV + CardDAV for calendar and contacts sync)
Forgejo (GitHub alternative, and the backend of Codeberg! I use this as a local backup to my git repos in addition with cloud backup with Codeberg. They work nice together, when you set two remotes per git repo)
Vikunja (to-do list syncing, don't use this anymore as I mostly use Joplin for this now)
Joplin (Markdown editor, supports cloud sync with nextcloud, I use this for both notes and to-dos!)
I used to run ConvertX (to convert any file type, whether it's document, image, video, etc. Think a self-hosted CloudConvert), but I somehow messed up the user permissions and couldn't log in (100% user error on my part), so I didn't bother.
Another thing, "Navidrome" is a self-hosted spotify alternative (I don't use it, I just have the MP3s and OGGs stored locally for offline playback!)
Jellyfin is a self-hosted netflix alternative. Where you get the media is up to you...
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Home Assistant.
If you want smart devices but not the data collection that goes with it, then Home Assistant is your friend. Just be forewarned that it is a seriously deep rabbit hole.
Hello from the rabbit hole. I haven't seen the light of day in years.
I barely know what food, water or sleep is anymore. But hey! I can turn my lights off and have them come on when sunset occurs. Or they track when I leave my apartment complex property with my cellphone so I don't waste power and there's no 3rd party corpo breathing down my shoulder.
I spun it up it up in may to fool around. Today I opened a brand new air purifier and imeaditley disassembled it to flash ESPHome firmware on it. It never once ran stock.
You have to show me that truck, how you got out of your apartment while remaining in the hole. That's some Goyo Satori stuff right there.
I used them for Christmas lights with that sundown condition (+just a time trigger for off at night).
Also came in handy for a light switch that was unfortunately on the wrong side from a table, now its just uses a motion sensor when someone walks to the kitchen and tells a third reality smart switch (screws on top of regular switch, so it works with any light type (e.g. fluorescent)) and is renter friendly.
Bonus points for no lag at all compared to crappy cloud dependent garbage and no need for apps for each device manufacturer. Just look if it is home assistant compatible and no cloud before buying devices since it us a lot harder or impossible in some cases to de-cloud them later.
Edit: plus same motion sensor concept to link several lights on the living room (those are just dimmable smart lights on table and floor lamps). Makes the place look cozy and feel well illuminated vs the usual single light with a wall switch. Aquara Wireless clicker to toggle between dim percentages. Its awesome (third reality or other home assistant friendly brand would work, I just already had this one).
Parties, dinners, other events.
Orgies.
key party
CalDAV calendar/tasks server s.a. Radicale (with Cfait as a tasks manager/client)
Game servers are always fun! I set up a custom Minecraft modpack and have it set up on my domain. I also run an Arma 3 server, but it's a hackjob of a self-host solution and I'm ashamed of how it works.
To address your examples directly:
Media server: Jellyfin, along with an *arr stack (Radarr, Sonarr, and qbittorrent and gluetun) to automate everything for you.
Photos app: Immich is your direct Google Photos replacement. Automated uploads, object detection, facial recognition, etc, all ran locally on your machine. Just remember: you still need a proper backup!
Recipe management: Mealie is the best I've used. It can import a recipe from almost any website. Very easy to cook with and follow along each step. It also lets you categorize meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner), rate your meals, and randomly pick meals for you.
Other things I have going:
Frigate NVR - A couple PoE and wifi cameras set up around the home record everything. Frigate records and timestamps things based on the settings - A person walks up, something loud happens, etc. My only gripe is that there isn't a good Android app to go with it. I'd like to receive notifications on my phone, too.
MeTube - Rip videos from almost anything. Friend sent you an Instagram video, but you don't have Instagram? Chuck it into this and it'll give you the video. Here's all the websites it supports.
My only gripe is that there isn’t a good Android app to go with it. I’d like to receive notifications on my phone, too.
Home Assistant can do notifications for Frigate that are very similar to Ring's notifications.
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Here are some of the things I self host that I haven't seen mentioned:
- Continuwuity is a chat server that talks Matrix, so you can join the chat rooms of a lot of open source projects or make end to end encrypted private chats
- Forgejo is a self-hosted code forge (github alternative) - very useful
- FreshRSS is a good one if you like to follow blogs, newsletters or pretty much anything 'news'
- Grafana plus VictoriaMetrics and/or Quickwit is very useful for keeping track of the health of all your services
- Homepage is a... homepage for all your services
- Stalwart gives you a mail server. Set it up for any other projects that need to send mail, or as a backup for your emails, contacts or calendars - it's the easiest way to set that up self hosted. Making it suitable as your main email may need more effort (delivery).
- Related to Continuwuity / matrix, you can set up the Mautrix collection of bridges, which let you bridge Discord, WhatsApp, IRC, telegram, and more into your matrix account or chats seamlessly.
- LMS (lightweight Media Server, not to be confused with Logitech Media Server) is an alternative to Navidrome that I find works better with my library tagging and ListenBrainz
- Speakr - audio transcription with diarisation. Very useful if you like to record meetings.
Speakr looks amazing! Thanks
Don’t know about stalwart but I can personally recommend mailcow
I used Mailcow for a while before switching to Stalwart out of curiosity. Stalwart was a bit easier to deploy and feels more polished than Mailcow, but they both get the job done.
Off the top of my head:
- Paperless ( Digital filing cabinet, tagging is local LLM backed
- Immich (Google Photos replacement)
- Nextcloud (Replaces the rest of Google Cloud functionality)
- LubeLogger (Vehicle maintenance logger)
- Home Assistant (Home and other things automation)
- Jellyfin (Primary media server)
- Hoarder (Online bookmarking, tagging and summarizing service, Local LLM backed. I think this project has changed names)
- Audiobookshelf ( Does what it says on the tin. Audiobook server, kinda like audible but I can actually find the books I already own. )
- Navidrome (Not sure if I'm keeping this one. Like the features but it largely duplicates the music side of Jellyfin)
- Minecraft Server (Again, does what it says on the tin)
There are other services I run but those are the ones I use most often and can rattle off when I'm as tired as I am right now.
Hoarder is now Karakeep
I much prefer navidrome for music over jellyfin. Better presentation and usage, tracks meaningful data and displays it by default, and won't delete your music library data if a folder gets moved. In other words jellyfin just gets rid of that data but navidrome will track missing songs and make you explicitly confirm removing them from the database.
I use FinAmp client with Jellyfin for music.
I agree the Jellyfin interface is not well optimized for music, but FinAmp negates most of that and my phone is how I mostly listen to music anyway.
I like Navidrone, but it's a duplicate service that doesn't really have a big value add over Jellyfin beyond the ability to share tracks with friends. A major feature upgrade, but not something I use terribly often.
Fair enough, i mostly use symfonium so same thing since both jellyfin/navidrome support subsonic API. I do like using the navidrome web ui on PC though
Here is my list:
- Open WebUI to have browser access to ollama
- AUTOMATIC1111 Stable Diffusion Web UI to generate images
- HomeAssistant to automate my home
- Immich to backup pictures from family phones and computers and make them accessible like Google Photos
- PeerTube to store and make accessible family videos
- PieFed to access the threadyverse
- Mastodon to do microblogging
- Uptime Kuma to check that all my services are up and running
- Synapse Matrix Server for Text, Video and audio chats with family and friends
- Syncthing to share files
+1 for Home Assistant, though the Docker implementation doesn’t allow add-ons. That may be fine at first, but a lot of the more complicated setup requires add-ons. For me, it was worth it to just go ahead and grab an HA Green to run my HA stuff.
Yeah, I'm still running on my raspberry pi for that reason, and for my parents we also bought a HA green.
Or just a VM running Home Assistant OS. Works great for me in ProxMox.
Searxng. Just use a private instance.
I couldn't make it work whatever I did, whichever instance I used it seemed to get rate limited after a while or showing weird results..
Couple of things I have running on my phone server no one has mentioned yet.
FoundryVTT is a self-hostable platform for playing tabletop RPGs online. It supports a vast selection of game systems and user/community developed mods making it extremely versatile.
Pihole is probably something you've heard of before and despite the name is hostable on a wide variety of systems. In case you haven't it's a network level ad blocker that works by taking over the role of DNS server on your LAN and blocking queries to domains used to serve ads or track telemetry.
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Headscale with headplane UI for access across servers
Openwebui for LLM stuff with tika for doc processing
Nextcloud for data and such
Immich(migrating away from photoprism) for better photo management and phone upload
Caddy for reverse proxy
Not used as much: Monica for contact management Mealie for its ease of importing recipes
I just found and set up Gameyfin (a play on Jellyfin). Still in the testing it out phase, but I love the idea of a collection of my friends and my DRM free games that we can all share with less reliance on big companies.
Jellyfin and Immich, first and foremost. From there, Nextcloud, Home Assistant, RustDesk, Docmost, and Nephele.
(Full disclosure: Nephele is my own service. I find it quite useful.)
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- media: jellyfin for videos, navidrome for music
- photos: immich
- game servers: +1 to foundryvtt if you're into tabletop rpgs. While the core software isn't open source, most systems are, and the pf2e system in particular is the best virtual tabletop experience you'll have on any platform.
- recipes: i settled on tandoor. Very much a fan of it.
- if you're a data nerd then chartdb for database diagraming, and cloudbeaver for database management
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Examples of the type of service I'm looking at: a media server, photos app (to replace Google Photos), game servers, recipe management, home automation... What other things do you know about that are fun/interesting/useful?
I use:
- Immich for photo hosting
- Jellyfin and navidrome for media (video and audio)
- Calibre and calibre-web for ebooks
- Minecraft server
- Mealie for recipes.
- Home assistant for automation
- Habitica for habit forming
- And I have fpp for my Christmas lights (the application is xlights, fpp is the server that runs the scripts)
All of these I like.
which habitica fork are you running at home? do you have the forked android app also? with home assistant, it's all just so slick!
I'm running https://github.com/awinterstein/habitica/ and have built the android app locally to get access. I really need to update and build it again eventually.
It's not seamless, but it functions for the family.
yayy habitica twinsies
Home Assistant might be of interest.
Additionally, pi hole, Immich, and things based on your hobbies might be fun. I recently started hosting a Grafana service to send my garmin data to since I like seeing my health data. I know you didn't want grafana, but using a hobby as an example. What are some of your hobbies?
AdventureLog is pretty cool. Pairs with Immich nicely too.
Paperless NGX is awesome. Of course Immich. I also really like Firefly-iii and Home Assistant.
Weather station, terrestrial/satellite TV DVR (TVHeadend), Git repository (Forgejo for a nice web UI, cgit for a classic UI), DNS resolver.
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