Didn't see Paperless in these comments yet. Great way to never again search for documents, bills, receipts, warranties, manuals, etc cetera ad nauseam.
Syncthing - No introduction needed. Couldn't live without it.
Healthchecks.io (you can self host this) - Dead man's switch monitoring for all my automation. Most of my automated scripts hit up a Healthchecks endpoint when they run, and if they fail to hit the endpoint on a regular schedule I get notified. Mandatory for my anxiety.
After looking at other's lists I think I am missing a good document server. Emby isn't the best music and photo server so I could look at improving that, but it has been good enough for those purposes that I haven't felt like going to the trouble of installing anything else.
Aster: Multiseat software for Windows allows several users to work on the same PC.
LaunchBox: Frontend for DOSBox, modern PC games and emulated console platforms.
One of my favorites is Whoogle, a simple Google search proxy. It accepts search requests and forwards them to Google anonymously, then strips out the AMP links and tracking. There's even an option for it to use Tor so your IP address changes frequently.
Wordpress (I'm evaulating this for a suitable Joplin replacement ) In short - I found that it's easier to reference a site instead of installing Joplin when I rebuild my computer.
Psono password manager
You may wonder why I am using Zitadel and Authentik, I first started with Zitadel, and moved to Authentik, but am evaluating both. They both have their positives. So far Authentik has been the most useful for me. And about the two password managers, I use Vaultwarden as it supports everything I need including Passkey support. My step daughter who is an adult is disabled so having an easier password like Psono makes it easier for her.
Nextcloud, after setting it up it gives me everything I love about Google and Apple's cloud services without the privacy invasion or any of the other cons. And I even find it more stable and less buggy. 10/10
My whole infrastructure is designed so that my homeserver is expendable.
Therefore my most important tool is Syncthing. It is decentral, which is awesome for uptime and reducing dependance on a single point of failure. My server is configured as the "introducer" node for convenience.
I try to find file-based applications, such as KeePassXC or Obsidian, whenever I can so that I can sync as much as possible with Syncthing.
Therefore there is (luckily) not much left to host and all of it is less critical:
Nextcloud AIO: calendar, contacts, RSS, Syncthing files via external storage
Webserver: Firefox search plugins (Why is this necessary, Mozilla?!), custom uBlock Origin filter list, personal website
So the worst thing that can happen when my server fails is: I need to import my OPML to a cloud provider and I loose syncing for some less important stuff and my homepage is not accessible.
Since I just rebuilt my server, I can confirm that I managed a whole week without it just fine. Thank you very much, Syncthing!
PiHole - blocking ads
Home Assistant - home automation, smart lighting & more
Nginx Proxy Manager - easy reverse proxying
Lemmy - here we are, on Lemmy
Immich - Google photos replacement
Motioneye - for putting video streams into home assistant and getting motion detection
WyzeBridge - connecting my Wyze doorbells to Motioneye
Doods2 - quick to set up object/person recognition for video and camera streams
I often see wireguard and adguard or pihole mentioned. There's a service that provides a combination of wireguard and pihole in 1 docker compose file and has a web interface for wireguard clients (wgeasy) called wirehole. Been using our for 2 years or so, very happy with it.
In my opinion the most elegant solution for an ad blocking VPN.
I can't live without my Nextcloud + Email server. Having all my personal files, contacts, email, calendar, and other personal information immediately accessible synced and backed up with a single app on any device or platform I want to use, is a dream come true, and I get to do it without any Big Tech, avoiding their lock-in and privacy invasion and without any fees or limits beyond my own hardware.
OpenVPN is how I can access it from anywhere in the world, so that gets an honorable mention too.
A proxy to go to blocked sites (which is pretty much my justification for paying the price), potentially some obfuscating solution later if shit hits the fan. An IRC bouncer (what I actually get the most use of). A hobby website. An XMPP server. Mumble in case I ever have friends to play video games with.
A bunch of random thought... If anyone has any brief tips...
I'm going to dive into borgmatic soon.
Is it possible to back up PCs on the same network?
I think I'm looking to do 2 things... Have my main PC synced to a backup drive. Nightly? So I can DD to a new drive if I mess some up on my PC. I'd like to be able to do this with my omv server too.
The other is just backing up nas storage and docker.
Borg seemed like a good option for some of that but I'm not sure about the usable syncing of a full system.
Also wireguard... Right now I use a VPN subscription and run apps through gluetun...
Instead of using my vpns meshnet I use tailscale for outside the home access. So I guess my question is, could I set up wireguard and use that instead of tailscale? My main reason is to find a way other family could utilize the nas and gluetun VPN connection.
There's so much planning that goes into this stuff. Finding the right apps and then the workflow... 🥴
In the end I want to host cloud storage and photo sharing for family, as well as maybe let them stream my media. Have the cloud storage, and my personal storage backed up. And possible let family utilize my subscription VPN if possible.
MythTV for the AV ... Volumio too, but, not upgrading that to v3.
Not seen radicale mentioned here...
I was an early adopter of OwnCloud and then switched to Nextcloud and, well, just gave up with it... no-one edits documents on it, we don't look at photos on it, but we did use a shared calendar... so I ditched that, installed radicale and been much happier (ie less admin time, more life time)
Also running syncthing from our phones to a home built NAS and a tablet in the kitchen as the NextCloud photo upload was (still is?) broken.
I run Arch btw
Home Assistant of course... MotionEye in a Pi Zero...
And it's all behind a pfSense box with DNS and GeoIP blockers installed.