Your point is well taken and I appreciate expanding my knowledge on this a bit, but I don’t think that it is that cut and dry. Mach, the kernel from which both is not Unix. Mach is basis for XNU (X is not Unix, sound familiar). From the screenshots from Wikipedia, pretending that BSD is not embedded within MacOS is just trying to obfuscate things. The Mach virtual memory manager for instance is in FreeBSD, so it goes the other way around as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU?wprov=sfla1

I have a FreeBSD time server that will be hooked up to a GPS at some point and my router uses OPNSense, so FreeBSD as well. I haven’t really used it much, but to a journeyman who will never write much if any code, they each have their own use case. I have a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air (really my wife’s), so I technically use it there.

Linux dominates and will dominate the desktop space between the two for a good long while (newer packages, more support, etc…). It also currently wins out with regard to gaming between the two. There is nothing wrong with Docker/Podman/LXC, but I don’t know enough about jails to really comment on which is better. Support is massive for docker though, virtually everything self hosted has a docker image. So I think that Linux takes the application server space for the most part.

FreeBSD keeps better time as I understand it, so that is why I chose it for my time server. Network Devices often use FreeBSD and do so very well, although there is also OpenWRT and others that do routing well, but are children compared to OPNSense and pfSense for example. I am thinking about spinning up a matrix server and and/or an email server on a FreeBSD box just to see how well they do.

Controversial segment follows:

Although there is substantial overlap, each major OS works its own brand of magic pretty well due to the support that people give it. I use Windows for my gaming PC for example because Playnite and better game support. MacOS, which is based on BSD btw, still has the market cornered on the creative pursuits. Apple products in general have the most robust and well put together user experience and will for a very long time. Android has the market cornered on bombarding you with a thousand ads near constantly via phones, smart TVs, and digital signage if that is what you are looking for. Its big use is in its ability to be hacked and shaped by more tech savvy users.

Lutris is another one like playnite that is designed specifically for Linux using gtk. Like playnite, it collates all (most?) of the major game clients like steam, ea and epic. It works pretty well from my experience.

https://github.com/lutris/lutris

This is very helpful. Thank you!

Do you have a link to the guide by any chance? I might try it again using one of my throw away domains as a test.

My ISP doesn’t. It an electric company that offers fiber, so not your typical telecommunications company. Still though, not a single blocked port.

On topic, I tried an email server and it is too much of a pain in the ass IMHO, without the requisite training and experience, but certainly not impossible.

I don’t believe they don’t use the YouTube API. So the changes Google might make wouldn’t necessarily affect Grayjay.

This is the way.

You’re probably right. I mean. I need most of the network devices, and I didn’t list everything I am running on each, just big things. I do need to consolidate some if them though. Its been a trip and has made me a better IT though.

• Old Gaming Rig - Proxmox
  • Nextcloud, Immich, Grafana on VMs
• Old HP ProDesk - FreeIPA
• NAS - TrueNAS Scale
• Couple Laptops - Docker Stuff
  • Wireguard, SearXNG, Nginx
• Raspberry Pi 4 - Home Assistant
• Rasberry Pi 3A+ - ntfy Docker
• Very Old Dell - NTP Server
• Qotom PC - OPNsense
• Network Devices - OpenWRT
  • Zyxel Wireless APs (3)
  • Netgear R7000 (2)
  • Zyxel 24 and 8 port Switches
• Gaming Rig - Windows 11 for now
  • Playnite, Sunshine, Jellyfin
• Another HP ProDesk hopefully running an email server soon
• UPS

Edit: Formatting

Thank you. Sounds exactly like what I’m planning. I am looking at ISPMail now and will be attempting to follow the directions soonly.

Why move to ISPMail over Mailinabox or Modoba or some other alternative?

Thank you! I appreciate it.

Nope. No issues whatsoever. DigitalOcean is great. Just curious what this community thought. My main concern is, again, one of choosing as ethical a solution as I can find. I cited Amazon because they are a nightmare company for many reasons and would rather not give them money. With that said, I would also like a service that I can rely on.

I am thinking about proton mail, but I want to try to host an email sever with one of my cheap throwaway domains to see if it would be worth self hosting for my main domain. That’s the other part of why I am choosing to self host. I am genuinely curious how stuff works under the hood.

Thank you! I’ll check it out.

Not sure you do. Maybe you can use one to move the existing files on Nextcloid, but immich has an auto upload feature that works perfectly fine on their android app.

I run both, and I do not upload pictures to Nextcloud. I know it doesn’t solve your problem about a Nextcloud instance already running with the photos, but I highly recommend moving over to immich for your photos needs and using it’s file structure. I.E. reuploading the files and deleting them from Nextcloud. If someone does have a better way to do it, I could have used it a few months ago, lol.

Your reason to move from OMV is the same as mine for XCP-ng. It is supposed to be a better hypervisor, but I just did not like the UI at all. It doesn’t help that you have to host a small VM just to have a webGUI.

For the hypervisor I recommend either Proxmox or XCP-ng. XCP-ng is technically a better hypervisor, but I personally use Proxmox because I like the UI.

For the NAS OS, I use and recommend TrueNAS Scale. You can run Docker containers on it. All this being said, I’ve never used Unsaid so I don’t know how they compare.

Out of curiosity, why move from OMV? I was thinking about trying it out for a second NAS.

I am using an OPNsense Qotom MiniPC as a firewall/router. I have three Zyxel Wireless APs that I flashed with OpenWRT. I also have two Zyxel switches (8 and 24 port) that I also flashed with OpenWRT. And lastly, I have two Netgear R7000s, also with OpenWRT, that are glorified smart switches. I am very happy with my setup. It works like a champ!