I have an early 2000s PC (pre-SATA) with 512MB RAM (I’d love to tell you about the CPU, but its under a cooler that isn’t going anywhere) that’s been sitting in closets for about 15 years. Assuming I’m willing to buy into it, can something like that reasonably host the following simultaneously on a 40GB boot drive:

Nextcloud Actual Photoprism KitchenOwl SearXNG Katvia Paperless-ngx

Or should I just get new hardware? Regardless, I’d like to do something with this trusty ol business server.

Edit: Lenovo or Dell as the most cost-effective, reliable self-host server in your opinion?

  • @ThorrJoEnglish
    1•11 months ago

    I’ll put it this way as somebody barging into the conversation: I love tinkering with SBCs, but setup, install, usage, and maintenance are all a hell of a lot easier on x86 still.

    Personally I have very little energy for unexpected issues, and when I gave up on SBCs for serving (as opposed to tinkering) everything got much easier and my progress got much faster.

    I’ve been buying dirt cheap used business PCs for servers, works great, doesn’t break the bank, and there are tons of parts available if you stick to the major manufacturers.