I’m not sure what to tell ya. A cheap ARM device is the CanaKit 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 starter kit costs $110, but the JetKVM I recommended above including the ATX adapter is also $110

https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-4GB-Starter-Kit/dp/B07V2B4W63/

https://www.wisdpi.com/products/jetkvm

https://www.wisdpi.com/products/atx-extension-board

The only setup I can imagine that’s technically cheaper is an esp32 flashed with firmware, as discussed by another user (you already replied to it): https://lemmy.world/comment/20842145

But the esp32 (regardless of if you use a wire to simulate a button press, or have the device generate the WoL packet) is gonna be a pain to setup and flash by comparison to the other options.

If you already have a pi, it just needs to be flashed with Raspbian and install the app etherwake ‘sudo apt-get install etherwake’ and run it with ‘sudo etherwake [target MAC]’.

For a reliable and useful remote control solution, you’re looking for an IPKVM with ATX power control. To setup the power control, you effectively set up a parallel circuit where your power switch connects to the motherboard, letting the KVM effectively press the power button ‘normally’. As a bonus, you can connect to the video and data of the KVM for even more remote control options, like be able to troubleshoot boot issues or load a virtual CD/DVD to upgrade the OS.

For tinkerers, I recommend the PiKVM, either DIY or Preassembled. It’s important to know that a RaspberryPi is energy efficient compared to an x86. This guy crunched the numbers

If you’re looking for a product instead of a project, I’d recommend JetKVM.

To be fair - this mindset is hardly exclusive to self-hosters. The dotcom era itself kicked off because it was easier to get advertisers to pay for server costs than users.

AI: taking another hit of acid in preparation to research the reason why the last thing it did after taking acid didn’t work out.

I don’t inherently agree. Gatekeeping often is a magnified issue for novice users. Perhaps they came over with the latest reddit exodus, saw recommendations for self hosting on the new platform, got pushback and created an account to complain. I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think it’s valid to assume because the account is new, it must be a troll.

Fair point. I think my eyes glossed over the part where they said they where taking a second look at docker (but caught the rest about rebuilding the OS in general). My sincere apologies 😓😅

Good call! 100% (at least for now 😅)

It should. I agree, but speaking as someone in the industry - usually it doesn’t. Just lines some rich guy’s pockets.

Not gonna argue that Jellyfin is technically superior, but I switched to Plex to stop others from giving/selling my viewing habits. Stopped using Plex when it leaked they were doing the same.

I used Plex for privacy reasons. I stopped using Plex for privacy reasons.

👌 ok!

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. I want the newbs to feel accomplished when it only takes them 2 hours to figure it out. 😉

But seriously, you and I have it on reflex, but there’s merit to the notion that we also have our mise en place - we’ve read the manual, we’ve saved or memorized the script, already know our local equipment passwords, etc - all things we took the time to do before and now have at the ready.

Setting up ddns takes 15 minutes for a professional (mostly setting a 1-line script to reload a simple url every ten minutes)

and poking a hole in the firewall takes maybe half an hour (since every router puts the relevant page in a different spot)

And for this you think it’s reasonable to pay ~$25/year for the rest of your life? You’re not wrong in the sense that you’re welcome to choose your own values, but I … disagree with you on the value position.

They can but - if their current setup meets their needs - why? There ain’t nothing wrong with having a few simple spare laptops, each an isolated environment for a few simple home server tasks each.

Don’t get me wrong - I too advocate for docker, particularly on new builds, or as a relatively turnkey solution to get started for novice friends, but the best setup is the one that works, and they sound like they got theirs where they want it.

What’s in a name? Legally speaking, your brain and nervous system would be classified as an ‘unintentional radiator’ (MRIs work because of this fact) and as such would fall under regulated devices if we weren’t legal persons.

I used ‘unregulated’ (errantly if you insist) to mean both unlicensed and also use cases where FCC isn’t actively enforcing the regulations on the books, cause technically virtually everything is ‘regulated’.

Like Metastatic on LoRA?

Or maybe we’ll use software defined radios (SDR) to transmit on other unregulated bands (as a hacker, you can often force the software to believe it’s in the wrong region to transmit on bands the FTC didn’t approve, as long as it’s legal somewhere.)

Just a reminder. Self-hosting is a hobby that is both useful and satisfying, and the skills you pick up will change how you see computers that are increasingly part of everything.

You probably won’t be going off-grid overnight, but the tech industry has spent 30 years promoting propaganda that ‘only skilled engineers should worry about what goes on under the hood’ and have conditioned us to expect tech to just be magic.

Fighting back means educating yourself, and that means grabbing an old laptop, learning how to install Linux on it, fire up a few Docker projects, and exploring all the options that opens up.

It will take a few weekends to get started, and it will require some upkeep. But for that price you will gain some sovereignty back over your digital life.

For extra credit and when ready you can pay $15 /year for a vanity domain (you’d only need one, as you can freely create an unrestricted number of subdomains), once done you move from being a serf to a digital landlord.

If you want DDoS protection you’re gonna need to work with someone who can swallow and filter a whole botnet’s worth of traffic and keep running. That takes some serious infrastructure.

I recommend Cloudflare for small businesses because their terms of service are actually decent, and blending their traffic into that stream makes their website indistinguishable from larger competition.

The next closest things are Pangolin (https://digpangolin.com/) and WireGuard. You’ll need to rent a server somewhere with a public-facing IP to run the server-side software (and DDoS protection is based on the services provided by your datacenter host). Pangolin has a UI similar to Cloudflare, but under the hood, it’s just Wireguard, so if you prefer more direct control, you can just set up a Wireguard tunnel by hand.

For myself, and my own needs, I don’t need all that. I just use DDNS* to point my DNS records to my home’s public ip address & use port forwarding to connect ports 80 & 443 to Nginx Proxy Manager. (When I add Anubis, I’ll port forward to Anubis and then have Anubis redirect valid traffic to Nginx Proxy Manager) This setup offers no protection against DDoS, but for what I use it for, I think it’s an acceptable risk (I’d either have to get someone’s attention and ire or just be cosmically unlucky)

*the server has a cron job to curl the DDNS refresh URL every hour.

It’s a chicken and egg issue. Nobody will create content on a platform with inferior usability.

Hard to capture that lightning

Personally I think self-hosting (Docker containers and stuff) would be a good solution, but for the Fediverse that would mean making a ‘family size’ edition of the server software.

I imagine if it became a common hobby and every geek interested supported ~4-25 friends, it might work.