This started as a simple list of stuff I've used or heard of to take back control of one's digital life, but it kind of got out of hand. Items that are bolded are ones that I use in my own setup. This isn't necessarily a value judgement or anything. This is just what I use.

Email #Permalink to this heading

• ProtonMail - has spreadsheets, cloud storage, vpn, and password manager if you pay extra, but all that exists to hold you in their ecosystem. Not a fan.
• FastMail - See above (minus vpn and password manager)
• PurelyMail - $10/yr for unlimited email. As many addresses, inboxes, or custom domains as you could want. No extra frills. Webmail is not great. Use a local mail client like Thunderbird.

"Cloud" Storage #Permalink to this heading

• NextCloud - Self-hosted, has a LOT of features. Very powerful, but also very bloated. Runs slow for me.
• CopyParty - Self-hosted. Works as a WebDAV server and is accessible over http/s. If you set up your config file right you can do share links or public upload hoppers. VERY fast and light. Has a basic text editor and directory management built in, but no other major frills.

Password Manager #Permalink to this heading

DO NOT USE THE PASSWORD MANAGER BUILT INTO YOUR BROWSER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Use one of these instead

• ProtonPass - A part of ProtonMail. Probably pretty secure. See concerns about ecosystem above.
• BitWarden - Very security focused. Regularly audited, premium offering is inexpensive (used to be even better, I'm grandfathered in at a frankly silly rate)
• VaultWarden - Literally "BitWarden but hosted yourself" Same codebase and everything. I don't host it myself because I trust them and the web availability is important.

Media Hosting/Streaming #Permalink to this heading

• Plex - Less good than it once was. They try to put their own streaming service into your personal media collection. I don't like it. Much more commercial than I'd normally like, but it is very user-friendly.
• Jellyfin - I use this for video, but it also handles music well. Serves libraries of media from your hard drives over the network to client devices. Out of network access is not as plug-and-play as Plex, but is not difficult either.
• Navidrome - An OpenSubsonic derivative for hosting a music library and accessing it from client devices. I use it with Symfonium as my music player of choice on Android. Seamlessly integrates with MusicAssistant
• MusicAssistant - HomeAssistant for smart speakers. Can connect libraries from a wide variety of music applications to a wide variety of smart speaker types.
• Immich - A self-hosted Google Photos analogue. Has a VERY similar UI and UX, but all your photos are yours
• Photoprism - another well-regarded "cloud" image service that you host yourself. I haven't tried it.
• Calibre Web Automated - An ebook manager and server. Allows you to hook up an e-reader to download local copies of your books, plus all the usual metadata management and file management of traditional Caibre.

Utilities #Permalink to this heading

• httpd - a docker image that contains an apache server ready to go for hosting static websites. Alternative images are available that include PHP if you need that.
• Forgejo - A self-hosted git server/code forge. Has pretty robust feature parity with Github and runs fast.
• Forgejo Runners - Self-contained Docker host for images for use in Actions, similar to Github Actions.
• Gitea - Another self hosted Github analogue. I've found it to run a little slower than Forgejo, but it's still very well regarded.
• FreshRSS - an RSS feed management platform. Allows you to have a centrally managed host for all your feeds, plus includes neat things like read status synchronization if you use more than one device.
• Actual Budget - an Envelopes-method financial tracker. Can import accounts from most financial institutions via SimpleFIN bridge. Includes options for automatic categorization and budget-setting. strongly encrypted by default and all of the math happens on the client device, so it's lightweight and fast.
• SearXNG - A self-hosted search engine. It can aggregate search results from a bunch of places and put it all in one spot. A bit slow unless you have the hardware and RAM for it, but useful nonetheless.
• HomeAssistant - A tool to combine all of the internet of shit stuff into one control panel. Extra useful for custom built or fully offline "smart' things that only need to talk within your local network.
• Storj - One of the cheaper S3 storage providers. Integrates well into TrueNAS for backing up your server. Update 2026-06-15: Storj has changed their pricing structure and now has a $50/month minimum cost. That isn't "we charge you when you rack up $50 in charges over however many months it takes" That's "even if you use 1TB which we would charge you $7 for, you have to pay $50 instead"
• Backblaze B2 - An S3 storage provider for backups. B2 is more geared at advanced users and businesses. They have a cheaper offering for personal device backup, but that doesn't support Linux. Update 2026-06-15: I'm using Backblaze now. The integration in TrueNAS isn't as nice as Storj, but you can use a Restic backup setup like Backrest to get a lot of that functionality back. I don't know if the price changed or something, but Backblaze is now at a decently competitive price and doesn't have a minimum, so if you store 500GB, you pay half of their 1TB rate etc.
• Borg - A backup solution that creates an encrypted archive at a target location. Extremely tuneable to back up exactly what you want and nothing you don't. The target destination can be a network share or file server. Use borg on individual computers to back up to the NAS, then the NAS's backup solution to back up to S3 storage.

Networking/VPN #Permalink to this heading

• ProtonVPN - My favorite commercial VPN. Good apps across operating systems. Your ISP is probably tracking your usage habits etc. This cuts that out. A VPN is protection against SOME types of nefarious internet activity. It is not a silver bullet and whoever you are reaching on the other end is still harvesting your data. This applies to Commercial vpns.
• Tailscale - A personal device network. Connect your home server and phone to the tailnet and they can talk to each other as if you were on the same LAN even when on different internet connections (home internet vs cellular for example) Set an exit node and all the local Wifi will see is traffic between your device and your home network, not where that traffic goes after it reaches your home network.
• Cloudflare Tunnels - Allows you to bypass your own firewall and network security by creating a dedicated tunnel between a published service and the wider internet managed by Cloudflare without opening ports to all traffic.
• Nginx Proxy Manager - Allows you to map routes for specific urls or subdomains to specific devices and ports on your internal network. ie: movienight.domain.com goes to the jellyfin container, versioncontrol.domain.com goes to the forgejo container.
• PiHole - DNS based ad, malware, etc blocking. Set up the container or raspberry pi and use it as your router's DNS to provide good ad-blocking to every device, even if it doesn't support an ad-blocker natively.

Operating System/Infrastructure #Permalink to this heading

• Ubuntu Server LTS - The very stable version of Linux. You get no handholds and no desktop by default, but it being a very open server means you can create the structure however you like.
• Docker - Runs applications in individual containers instead of on the host machine. Safer and more reliable.
• TrueNAS - a network attached storage and application focused OS. Built for rolling your own everything.
• ProxMox - A server OS that is built nearly exclusively on containers and virtual machines. Extremely powerful, but less user friendly.