good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?
Hello , dear lemmy users , I am starting to really like self-host because they are really fast and mostly i use open source stuff (like lemmy /photon etc) which were sometimes slow but after self hosting it now on the pc i am on using , i really like it
Now , I would like to host some stuff like jellyfin , navindrome , photon , adgaurd home and just leave it running on a device in maybe near future (i can convince my brother to pay for it , after he gets his job maybe)
TLDR : I wanted to ask What's your favourite alternative to raspberry pi for simple self hosting or maybe possible near home automation
Edit: thank you all for helping me , I am starting to believe that i should look into using dell wyse or the likes which are meant to be used for hosting or a old laptop (since i dont own a laptop anyway , i just own a pc ) and since i run linux anyways , i am thinking of owning a laptop dual booting it with alpine (that has docker) and a simple minimalist os like hyprland on it just in case i need to travel with it (which to me seems very unlikely , I dont travel much so..) I am confused about it
Edit 2 : I am very new to self hosting so currently i would run stuff on my pc only (using portainer) , However when needed to buy , i am thinking of buying the cheapest thin client maybe a nuc or dell wyse
I am already trying searxng , shiori(bookmark manager) , portainer,freshrss , photon , froodle-s pdf tool which i have all closed except portainer currently I am also thinking of shifting to podman as well but cant find a good gui for it like portainer , (portainer really just blew my mind with its templates)
Compact business desktops like others have mentioned are great. Depending on your needs, I also like using older or used laptops. They’re still power efficient if you get a recent processor model, people sell them for fairly cheap used, and sometimes having an attached keyboard and display is more convenient than having to hook up a crash cart
Plus it's got a built-in UPS
It'll become a spicy UPS if you leave the power plugged in all the time though.
Why?
Laptop batteries are not designed to be at 100% charge for a long period of time. Same as phone batteries. They'll expand and become a fire hazard. Batteries that have expanded look a bit like a pillow so they're commonly referred to as "spicy pillows".
Are you sure this is true with nowadays batteries too? My laptop is almost always connected to the power supply, is about 5 years old and the battery still seams to be in a good shape.
Take it off the charger and see if you get the claimed battery life. Maybe you will, or maybe your 3+ hours of battery time runs out in less than one.
It doesn't last as much as it did when it was new (about 5/6 hours), and that's expected, but it still last about 3/4 hours and it seems pretty decent to me!
Are they cheap though? Maybe in the grand scheme of things.
Like $200 for one Thinkpad versus five raspberry pis.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a Raspberry Pi for $40, the demand still has prices sky-high
I thought we had moved past that
Have we though?
Yep, looks like we have. You linked the highest tier RPi available from CanaKit and it's in stock and still being sold at the same price it was when it released in
20192020, $75 (I forgot the 8GB model released a year later).When they are in stock, they are selling at normal retail prices again. The stock is still only lasting for hours to days unfortunately.
Go on eBay and look for “tiny” or USFF boxes. Dell, HP, and Lenovo make various models of 1L units that are commonly available. Just make sure to do some research on what the specific hardware capabilities are to make sure they satisfy your needs.
Source: my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
Will second this idea. I've had good luck running low-use Samba servers on a Lenovo tiny model.
Thin clients are also solidly good as container hosts. I've used HP T630s and Wyse 5070s in place of RPis during the great pi shortage with good results. You know something is fucked when you can spend less money on a J5005 with 8gb RAM than you do on a Pi 4.
I've had good luck running more intensive loads on more recent models of these systems, say 3 to 5 gens old ... multiple desktop OSes running concurrently on Proxmox, etc. The "1 liter" class of PCs is really quite capable these days!
Can you get 10Gbps NAT throughput through it? That's the main reason I'm not running my own pfSense/opnSense router.
I've currently got a TP-Link ER8411 which was affordable ($350) and can reach 10Gbps, but it doesn't have an IPv6 firewall (what???) so I can't actually enable IPv6.
So the big gain you’ll likely see is bang/capability for the money. If you’re careful and wait for a deal, can usually find 1L boxes for like $50-75. Get a cheap m2 ssd (and back up your confs regularly if you’re not running raid z2). The nic is going to be anywhere from about 30-70, but you’ll need to do your research on exactly what capabilities the thing you’re buying has (for example: I had a false start initially, because the RJ45 10G nic I found couldn’t negotiate at 2.5G (what I’m running now), and it’s actually pretty hard to find a 2.5G enterprise nic. Make sure the nic is intel, too - none of that Realtek crap, which is less performant and often has stupid driver crap you have to deal with under Linux and BSD (pfSense). You may want to spend a few extra bucks and get the Lenovo external pcie mount plate/bracket for aesthetics/“don’t stick your fingies in here”, and you will need an adapter for Lenovo’s proprietary PCIe-but-not-a-standard-PCIe-port thing.
I've actually got a spare HP ProDesk SFF PC with an Intel Core i5-9500. Would that CPU be sufficient?
I've also got a spare 10Gbps Trendnet NIC which uses an Aquantia AQC107 chip. Are Aquantia OK for this purpose?
Yeah, though the advantage of the T sku CPUs is that they have ultra low tdp. Great for 24/7 boxes.
The T version is usually the same price as the non-T version, and on a good motherboard you can modify the power limits in the BIOS to make a non-T CPU perform similarly to the T version.
With which CPU? How much does it consumes?
i5 8500T. I don’t recall exactly what the power draw is, but iirc it’s in the 20-30w range - admittedly a bit high, but that’s likely due to the old LSI nic in there which is technically an enterprise-grade card, and not terribly power efficient. Nonetheless, works great, full 10G speed, no thermal issues in the last few months I’ve been running it (in the summer, so I should be totally fine in the winter).
Yeah Lenovo tinies ares great I have a bunch of m910q's I use for everything
Thin clients off eBay. I picked up a Dell Wyse with 8gb memory, 4 cores, 16g emmc, and a 256G M.2 SSD for about $40. Includes the case, power supply, power button, etc. Still uses very little power. Install the x86_64 version of dietPi on that and it's been Rock solid running my docker projects.
Also picked up and HP T620 with similar specs. Haven't started using it yet but I expect similar results.
Much better deal than RPi and for most use cases equal or better able to do the job.
Wow, that was a very good deal! I've just had a look and for those specs 100€ are not enough here in Europe. For that price I've bought some Fujitsu Futro that are not even near those specs (2/4GB RAM, 8GB SSD).
Does lol like the prices have gone up a tad, but I just looked and could still pick up a Wyse 5060 with 8gb memory for about 33 USD shipped. Doesn't seem to include power supply or ssd so add about $10usd each for those maybe $55 or so.
Can't say what prices are like in Europe tho.
I've got a t620, and am using it as a firewall. It has aes-ni so I can generate certs. Plus it has a pcie slot, so I threw a nic in there. Its powerful for around the same price as a raspberry pi is going these days. I think I got it for about $80 plus $10 or $15 for the nic.
A used NUC blows a raspi out of the water performance-wise, and they use surprisingly little power when not under load. I run proxmox with a NAS, pihole and homeassistant on a NUC from 2015, and it draws around 9W.
If you want embedded boards Rockchip and Sunxi/AllWinner are pretty well supported by the Linux kernel. Go have a look at boards with full Armbian support, that's usually a good shortcut to finding one.
My preference runs to the Nanopi boards, they're better built than Orange Pi hardware. You're going to see a lot of Orange Pi recommendations based on cost but be aware that they're not all that well made and occasionally have reliability problems. I was pretty chuffed for my $20 Orange Pi zero until I realized that the WiFi basically had zero chance of working reliably. Pick models carefully after reading about people's experiences with them on the Armbian forums so you can avoid duds.
If you don't need embedded arm check out the thin client selection on eBay. You can buy a J5005 Dell/Wyse thin client for like $100, some models even have a low profile pcie slot (these cost a bit more because they're desirable as pf/OPNsense platforms.) These make pretty solid Proxmox or container host platforms, or you can use them for their intended purpose and jam in a low profile graphics card.
My personal "I don't feel like spending $150 on a 4gb pi" favorite is the HP T630 thin client. On a good day you'll find an 8gb RAM model with the power brick for <$60 shipped. Do the eBay thing with any of these and try to best offer the price down a bit if it's an option.
If you want to step up a notch check out the HP T730, this one comes with a pcie slot and makes a fairly decent Proxmox virtualized router host. They're usually available for <$130/shipped or less. The HP T740 is the same thing with a Zen1 embedded SoC, those run ~$220 or so and support NVMe. The Wyse 5070 offers Celeron or Pentium options and is a <10W machine, the J5005 version actually works pretty well as a hardware transcoding PLEX host (provided you're not transcoding 4k.)
The T730 and T630 use SATA m.2 storage, the 5070 and T640 support NVMe. All of these have an m.2 A+E key slot for WiFi or an extra 2230 NIC.
I'd recommend an x86 board because as great as the RPI and similar can be, ARM just doesn't have the same support for a lot of things you might want to self host. I personally like to spring for a used thinclient PC off of eBay, because they have about the same resources as a Raspberry Pi but on an x86 platform. With my thin clients I typically install Alpine but a really light Debian install could work as well, and then from there you can go about installing Docker etc for a little homelab. Even better, if you get lucky and get a couple of them you could mess around with clustering them and some light Kubernetes at home. I've got mine running PiHole and Unbound on Alpine to serve my whole house with DNS and it works great. I don't think I've had hardly any downtime issues or anything of that sort.
TL;DR: try a couple cheap thin clients from eBay and you can run some light stuff on them for cheap.
I'm seconding this. The Pi-supply-dry is getting better, but for similar money to a Pi4 you can get an ex-corporate 1L mini PC (I like the HP G1 800's in a nice case, with engineered cooling, real storage, and easy memory upgrades.
Have you measure the power consumption? How is it?
According to the readout on my UPS, about 10W idle
Like what? Person explicitly mentioned opensource software.
Usualy thay are cheap used, so it might work too
ARM software support is just generally rough, yeah it's good on RPi (and Mac) but on other boards it typically sucks, namely the cheaper boards OP would be buying. Here's a couple software examples though, I'm a big docker user and just the other day I was trying to run I believe Mastodon and Lemmy on an ARM device but there was just no image for it. I'm sure I could build an image myself but for someone just getting into Homelabbing (like OP), x86 is the platform to use.
Let's see... Not counting Rock64 which is popular and AARCH, I also have chinese noname Espada E-726 TV Box on Allwinner A10, that(box) nobody knew about. Built bootloader, built kernel, installed system on SD card, it works.
It is easier to not use Docker.
There is actually lots of OSS that does not support arm. As a popular example documentserver for nextcloud.
If it can be compiled from sources, it works
SIGILL
This means you did not compile for correct architecture. There also can happen with program that use hand-written assembly, but I reeeeally doubt nextcloud devs do it.
For simplicity just compile with -mcpu=native on target computer.
EDIT: wait a sec, who are you? I doubt you want documentserver too.
Nonaligned memory access can occur in C code. I'm not speaking about nextcloud, you mentioned "if you can compile it works (for any architecture) ", which is demonstrably false.
Entire Cortex A-series should work fine with unaligned memory access to RAM when MMU is enabled(which is always on for linux). With few exceptions, but nextcloud is not a device driver.
I never said that.
It was implied in the discussion: "if you can compile it, it will work".
There's plenty of ARM processors before Cortex. There's SPARC. And there's a crapton of others with their quirks.
Just because you can compile a program from source, it doesn't guarantee it will work. As mentioned: online assembly, memory alignment, but you can add endianness or questionable pointer arithmetic, not to mention dynamic runtime code generation. And I'm sure there's 5 other reasons that I haven't personally run into.
Yeah, in a perfect world everyone would write bug-free, platform-independent code, alas...
Nope. If you can compile for this microarchitecture, it will work on it. You know what was implied, I know what was implied, but you choose to run in circles and yell "Look! This person doesn't know that program compiled for one architecture can't run on another!"
Me: says about -mcpu=native
You: oh, yeah, there is completely another architecture.
Ooorr...
Did you just said that SPARC is ARM processor? Who tf are you?
What now?
. . .
What distro runs ARM in big endian? Name one. I think you are just trying to throw as much arguments you don't understand as possible. EOF.
I assume you program in Javascript and haven't written C code ever. SPARC doesn't allow unaligned memory access to this day, no matter what parameters you throw to the compiler. If a program doesn't process endianness won't work correctly. s/online/inline/g. You didn't even address 4 other arguments.
"if you can compile it, it will work" is just false.
Show me your github profile
I'm a big fan of dell wyse machines. Loads on ebay, ex business machines. X86 so decent support, decent dell power supply, on / off button / in cases and low power.
I have wyse 3040 for pihole cost 39.99
I have wyse 5070 with windows 10 for plex and running a Ubuntu 22 server in virtual box, cost 59.99
Thanks for the suggestion (I am looking forward to other comments as well) Well , I like x86 in general but not for self-hosting maybe? i have heard that they are bulky and take a lot of energy
You can expect a thin client to use about 10 watts idle (but more under load), which adds up to about 100 kWh per year. Some models use even less.
Source,
Even less. My thin client draws 5W in idle.
https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/3040/ https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/5070/
Both mine are there and tested for power use.
Running 24/7 for a good 6 months. Certainly not noticed any difference to power cost.
When people say x86 is not power efficient, it usually means it's not very efficient for battery powered devices, or is kind of wasteful in situations like in data centers where they're running thousands of machines. For home use, with a machine that's gonna probably end up idling most of the time, my best guess is it would cost you a couple tens of dollars a year to run vs a slightly smaller amount.
Personally, just so I don't have to deal with software compatibility on different architectures, I'll gladly pay that small difference in power usage, but this will of course vary depending on what you're looking to run on there.
I migrated on to a NUC. They seem to have the right mix of performance and power efficiency, for me. The i3 processor also means you're not dealing with the extra complexity of Arm64.
Unfortunately Intel have discontinued the NUC line, so they won't be available in the future and we'll have to get one of the copycats instead.
Intel ended up changing their mind and sold the product line to Asus, who will continue producing NUCs!
Oh I didn't know that. That's great!!
Do you mean NUC?
Yes I did. Autocorrect decided to "help". Apparently the edit I made hasn't propagated through.
Pine64 single board computers. Rock64, Rockpro64, Quartz64.
Cheap chinese SBCs/TV boxes on Allwinner.
I really Dont know I am Ok with running chinese boards and also https://pine64.com/product-category/rockpro64/?v=0446c16e2e66
the boards you are showing me are 80-90$ which to me is maybe a lot since raspberry pi prices have started to slow down as well
Plus some dockers may not work and jellyfin is saying its not recommended to run it on rasp pi so i dont know actually
I got a mini pc (e.g. a NUC). I did this after the price for rasps went sky high. Check out used NUCs, you can get a lot of power for the price.
This is the way I went, I got the tiny form factor versions of a Lenovo and Dell business desktops for about 100 bucks each. If you get lucky you can find real good deals on these things most will take a 2.5" drive as well as a m.2 drive, and they'll fit upwards of 32 or 64gb of ram depending on the device.
I just picked up one of these since I had the change: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C1X191NR
Plus a 4TB samsung external drive. Should be awesome, and fits anywhere in my house.
Seconded that used minis ought to be quite reasonable and fast if this seems like too much. (Although you can also get a similar new one for half this, if you cut down on disk and ram.)
That's actually great for the price, i7 12, 32Gb ram, 1Tb M2, etc? Not bad at all! Would even be a great little gaming setup
The one advantage of using megacorp "1-liter" business PCs from Dell/HP/Lenovo over brands like Minisforum is that parts commonality / availability is likely to be a lot better for the big brand boxes.
This will make little or no difference to a lot of people of course :) in my case it's a big factor because I'm trying to do everything on a shoestring budget and I want the hardware to be physically small but still as repairable/upgradable as possible, and to last as long as possible. So I ended up going with used 1L PCs even though you get a bit less CPU capability per dollar spent, as right now these PCs are the smallest platform that I know of that tends to be upgradable (no soldered RAM etc) and have lots of parts available.
I have a nuc from 2015-2018 and its very bad at heat management. Like during summertime if the AC is not on its going to reboot itself after a while when using it (it can reach 35C° where it is stored) I now have a optiplex micro which is much better but I still want to use the NUC for something else
I use Hardkernel products for my kid's PCs, as pihole, etc. Their products are sold under the Odroid brand. I have the Odroid C1 and C4 line of SBCs and they work as expected. The C1 used to be my mediaplayer, now it runs a game server and pihole. A little older, but it still has use.
I've been using an XU4 for a number of years. Not used it as a server but it works great as a client. I'm sure it would with excellent as a server. I've had Ubuntu, tried Android, and currently running Batocera for gaming.
I like that it has an SD slot like a Pi but also a storage module which plugs onto the board which is much faster. I can boot from one or the other by flicking a switch on the board.
Only draw back is that it doesn't have onboard WiFi or Bluetooth and limited USB ports. I had to use a powered USB hub then find a PSU with a step down inverter to power it all, making it bigger than a small board. I'd still highly recommend it though.
I use their toaster NAS. The HC4 I think. Not the best multimedia server but it's a serviceable file server.
Thin clients! $30, sometimes $15, for just as much CPU power as the Pi. More power usage, though. And ensure you buy the cables and SSD, check carefully what the seller is including or excluding from the shipment.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
[Thread #214 for this sub, first seen 13th Oct 2023, 14:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
What you are after is basically a server. Your next logical step if Pi is not enough - Intel NUC.
intel is out of the nuc business.
But you can still get a bunch of good ones on the second hand markets. Also, NUCs are still a thing. Intel deemed the formfactor mature enough too pull out themselves and leave it too the partners to develop further.
Asus took it over.
Another option is the Dell Optiplex micro. It's got a Core processor and is about the size of a couple Bluray cases stacked on top of each other. I believe they run about 10-15W under a light load too.
Yes, Intel would not make them anymore, but it doesn't mean there would not be no NUC-alike computers on the market. There are loads of them already, so no issues.
I like fanless PCs. Some have gpio headers for home automation purposes.
For just self-hosting, I'd probably like using refurbished laptops. Seems nuts, but low power, included input and screen, built in UPS, and sometimes you can get them for like 100 bucks. You can just use a USB or wifi device for home automation purposes if need be.
100 bucks is a lot
Depends on what you're getting. If you're getting a 7th gen or newer Intel Core processor, it's not too bad.
Jellyfin recommends not using SBCs. I was in the same boat as you a month ago. Started on an RPi. Works fine for raw (no transcoding). Poor performance if you do any scrubbing or try to watch something while new content is processing. Got a mini PC. It was better but its basically a laptop chipset, so still not the best experience. Had other things I wanted to do on my self-hosted setup so decided to just bite the bullet and make a proper build: 12th gen i5, Intel Arc GPU, 4+8 SATA ports with PCI card, 3xNVME, 10xHDD/SSD case. Can't speak to the performance yet. Learning Ansible to automate managing it including installing the OS.
I would stay away from NAS systems like QNAP or Synology. They tend to not be much better than a SBC.
For the budget constraints I would just echo getting the cheapest desktop-class PC you can get your hands on in a suitable form factor.
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration/#hardware-acceleration-on-docker-linux
Some NAS systems have regular Intel x86 CPUs, and some have Ryzen CPUs with built in graphics. You need to check the specs carefully though.
Used an rpi4 for a year as a media server and was quite happy but wanted to run a few more things so I switched to an i3 NUC11 and I really like it. Running an arr stack + plex + jellyfin + nextcloud and its using 7w 'idle' (mentioned services running) with a headless debian 12. Fit a 5TB HDD in it and a 1TB nvme. 16GB or ram. It definitely runs faster and jellyfin is actually usable. Still though, rpi4 can handle the load (sans jellyfin). The rpi5 will also fit into this market very well.
OrangePi is pretty nice. Built in 8gb eMMC module is a huge performance boost. Only $60 with case and PSU.
Yeah I have an orangepi5 running pihole and a suite of home assistant related docker containers and it's been working flawlessly. Even has an m.2 slot
Edit: actually read the OP lol. For Jellyfin I think I'd opt for something a bit more powerful than an SBC.
Orange Pi is pretty hit and miss in my experience. I had a number of them a few years ago that either had horrible reliability or problems with their WiFi.
On the other hand my Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 made a great retro emulation machine, I've had zero issues with that model.
Do due diligence per model if you're buying one, some aren't great.
Second hand thin clients (like the dell wyse already mentioned) are often cheap and easy to use https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/
Just look for a NUC with an Intel N100 with passive cooling.
Hardly the same price range and since most passive cooled N100 rigs come off AliExpress you’ve got to take the lottery of import duty.
I’ve used lots of different boards. The Radxa Rock 3c is cheap and has decent performance, but the official OS support is a bit old. The Libre Computer boards are also good and have Armbian support. Libre Computer is releasing a couple more this year too. BananaPi has good options that aren’t expensive, like the BananaPi M5. Friendly Elec has some boards like the NanoPi R2C and R5C that aren’t pricey and have Armbian support. Any one of these boards are fine for a small home lab. Just boot Armbian, install Docker, and add your containers.
I'm current using a refurbished business Lenovo mini PC. I've seen a similar model with i7 and 16GB of RAM for about $170 on Amazon. There are also mini PC's using NXXX model Intel CPU's with a TDP of 10w, but I don't think you can upgrade parts on those.
That's what I use for my low intensity projects. I didn't realize the i7 ones were that cheap now, maybe I should grab another.
I7 doesn't mean much without knowing the CPU generation. A 4th Gen i7 is dirt cheap but is only 4c/8t and a power hog. Meanwhile a much newer i3 could be more capable at 1/3 the power.
Check eBay and you'll get a good look at pricing, Amazon sellers will take you for a ride here.
This. My old 2nd gen i5-750 doesn't hold a candle vs. a modern i3.
I wouldn't recommend anyone go older than 6th Gen Intel CPUs these days. They're already 6+ years old, anything before that doesn't usually support x86-64-v3 and the perf/watt just isn't worthwhile. Your total cost of ownership on, say, a Haswell i7 is going to be significantly higher than a Skylake machine even over the first year once you account for energy costs.
That doesn't even touch on iGPU performance or hardware codec support, you really want to go as new as possible if you're looking for media playback or transcoding - the energy cost on decoding alone without HW support is bananas.
Preferably you'd use Intel 8th gen (when the i3s stepped to 4c/8t and the i5/i7s went to 6c/12t) but I don't know how competitive pricing is on those these days. I'd try to stick with Zen2 on the AMD side if possible, that's about when their perf/watt really started to get good - I do have a soft spot for Zen1 embedded though, you can get great prices on v1756b boxes on eBay now (the HP T740) and those make nice virtualized 10Gb router platforms.
Used "1-liter" business PCs which come with a modest amount of RAM+storage (assuming you're likely to replace/upgrade after buying anyway) and an 8th gen Intel CPU should run between ehhh like $125 to $250 depending on which model CPU, how much RAM etc. Totally worth it IMO, I use one with an i5-8500T as a Proxmox host for my web services and so far I'm quite happy with it. Snagged a deal on it a couple months ago, $110, shipped with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD which I immediately replaced.
I bought a small form factor PC on eBay (HP ProDesk 600 G5) with a Core i5-9500, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD for $199 around a year ago. I upgraded it to 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe. Made a great home server with a bunch of stuff running on it. I actually want to sell it soon since I built a new server/NAS system.
The RK3566 and RK3588 alternatives are pretty good, and there are a bunch of them from different companies.
I have a 3566 myself as a compatible alternative to a CM4, and it does its job just fine.
I haven't actually tried it since I'm still a beginner in selfhosting, but I was planning to buy a dedicated hardware for my homeland and my main two choices were the new Raspberry Pi 5 or some mini-PC like the one in this video I don't know if it could be similar to what you are looking for...
My current server runs on a fan less embedded Celeron board from ASRock, it runs really well... But since I've upgraded my desktop, I'm building a Ryzen server now
Rock 64 or zimaboard are some other alternatives. Iirc they're around the same price range though.
Not as cheap as the wyse, but probably way more powerful.
Framework sells a case to turn their mainboard into an SFF pc.
https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case-and-mainboard-kit
I know you want an upgrade over rPi but If you want a cheaper option, you can buy an android box and install linux on it. most of them have unlocked bootloaders. you can usually find a ready to use .iso on Armbian community forums by searching the SOC model there.
Personally I run a 5$ android box. it has a quad core cpu + 2GB of ram. I use it for hosting my music library on an external hdd and streaming 1080p video. I also set it as my vpn gateway. It's enough for my use case so I didn't upgrade it.
I've recently been looking into ESP32 programming - they're microcontrollers with onboard Bluetooth and WiFi, that are smaller yet more powerful than Arduinos. Randomnerdtutorials gets recommended a lot elsewhere; I believe I saw one tutorial for running a web server on an ESP32.
If you need a full OS and/or more resources, I'm not sure raspberry pi can be beaten (at least, that's how the market was years ago when I was looking)
You alluded to this already but ESP32 et al is really awesome but they (and arduino) are microcontrollers, not mini pcs like a raspi which have very different purposes.
You CAN run a webserver on a microcontroller but you’re essentially writing a program to do so. On a raspi you’re installing a full OS and then installing apps (nginx, Apache, jellyfin etc).
Conversely raspi has GPIO which can be used to easily interface with electronics just like the ESP32 but now you’re stuck maintaining a whole os to make your LED blink.
Running a webserver is not the same as hosting a service. For the software examples requested by OP, an ESP32 is useless
Ah must've skimmed over that part, my bad. The home automation part jumped out to me
It's Alright but for me microcontrollers like the one you told me are out of way since i need to run most and foremost docker for things like jellyfin /adgaurd home etc.