Docker

If you’re leaving Google Photos (or Apple iCloud, or Amazon Photos), you’ve probably narrowed it down to two options: Photoprism and Immich. Both are excellent. Both are self-hosted. Both will keep your photos private. But they’re built for different people. Here’s the honest breakdown after running both in production throughout 2025 and into 2026. The Quick Answer Choose Immich if you want a Google Photos replacement with automatic mobile backups and you’re comfortable with a fast-moving project that occasionally has breaking changes. ...

Building a Home Lab on a Budget: $100 to $500 Tiers You don’t need a rack full of enterprise servers to start self-hosting. Some of the most useful home labs run on hardware that costs less than a month of cloud subscriptions. This guide breaks down exactly what you can build at three budget tiers — $100, $300, and $500 — with specific hardware recommendations, software stacks, and realistic expectations for each level. ...

Dropbox gives you 2GB free, charges $12/month for 2TB, and scans every file you upload. Google Drive is no different — your documents train their AI models and feed their ad network. If you want file sync without the surveillance tax, Syncthing is the answer. Syncthing is a free, open-source, peer-to-peer file synchronization tool. It syncs files directly between your devices with no cloud server in the middle. No accounts, no storage limits, no monthly fees. Your files never touch a third-party server. ...

Most monitoring tools make you suffer through hours of configuration before you see a single metric. Netdata flips that on its head — install it, and within seconds you’re looking at hundreds of real-time charts covering every aspect of your system. No agents to configure, no dashboards to build, no query languages to learn. What is Netdata? Netdata is an open-source, real-time monitoring agent that collects thousands of metrics per second from your servers, containers, and applications. It comes with a built-in web dashboard that auto-discovers everything running on your system and visualizes it immediately. ...

If you have a collection of comics, manga, or graphic novels sitting in folders on a hard drive, Komga turns that pile into a fully browsable, searchable library with a built-in web reader. Think of it as Jellyfin, but purpose-built for comics and manga. What is Komga? Komga is a free, open-source media server for comics, manga, magazines, and eBooks. It scans your existing files (CBZ, CBR, PDF, EPUB), organizes them into libraries and series, and serves them through a clean web interface or any OPDS-compatible reader app. ...

Every search you make on Google, Bing, or even DuckDuckGo tells someone something about you. Search history builds a disturbingly accurate profile — your health concerns, financial situation, political interests, and everything in between. SearXNG flips that model entirely: you get the results, nobody gets your data. SearXNG is a free, open-source metasearch engine that aggregates results from over 70 search engines simultaneously. It strips out tracking parameters, doesn’t log your queries, and runs entirely on your own server. Think of it as a search engine that works for you instead of advertisers. ...

Most note-taking apps want you to pay monthly, sync through their cloud, or install an Electron app that eats 500MB of RAM. Memos takes a different approach: it’s a single binary that stores everything in SQLite, looks like a Twitter feed for your thoughts, and exposes a full API for automation. What is Memos? Memos is a self-hosted, open-source note-taking service built with Go and React. Think of it as a private micro-blog for quick thoughts, bookmarks, code snippets, and daily notes. Everything is stored locally, rendered in Markdown, and accessible through a clean web UI or REST API. ...

If you’re running multiple Docker services and juggling Nginx configs every time you add a container, Traefik will change your life. It watches Docker for new containers and automatically configures routing — no config file edits, no reloads, no downtime. What is Traefik? Traefik is a modern reverse proxy and load balancer designed for microservices and containers. Version 3 brought HTTP/3 support, WASM plugins, and a cleaner configuration model. It sits in front of all your services, handles SSL termination, and routes traffic based on Docker labels. ...

YouTube videos disappear all the time. Channels get deleted, videos go private, content gets region-locked, and suddenly that tutorial or lecture you bookmarked six months ago is gone forever. Tube Archivist solves this by letting you build your own personal YouTube archive — complete with metadata, thumbnails, subtitles, and a slick search interface. What is Tube Archivist? Tube Archivist is an open-source, self-hosted YouTube media server. Think of it as Plex or Jellyfin, but specifically designed for YouTube content. It downloads videos using yt-dlp under the hood, indexes everything in Elasticsearch for fast full-text search, and presents it all through a clean web interface. ...

If your team’s documentation lives in scattered Google Docs, random Notion pages, and Slack messages nobody can find — Outline is the fix. It’s a fast, beautiful, open-source wiki that feels like a modern app instead of a dusty Wikipedia clone. What is Outline? Outline is a self-hosted knowledge base and wiki built with React and Node.js. It supports real-time collaborative editing, Markdown, nested document collections, and blazing-fast search. Think of it as Notion’s wiki feature, but running on your own hardware. ...