Guide

Network-wide ad and tracker blocking at the DNS level — one install protects every device on your network.

A lightweight, open-source, privacy-focused web analytics tool with a simple dashboard, positioned as a GDPR-friendly alternative to Google Analytics.

Web UI for managing Docker and Kubernetes — containers, images, volumes, and stacks without the CLI.

A powerful, free, open-source relational database -- installed from Ubuntu's own package repository, with the initial admin role and a first database created.

Open-source metrics collection and alerting engine — the standard data source behind most self-hosted Grafana dashboards.

A free, open-source backup solution purpose-built for Proxmox VE (though it can back up other sources too) -- deduplicated, incremental VM/container backups with its own web UI.

A free, open-source type-1 hypervisor (Debian-based) for running VMs and LXC containers on dedicated hardware, with a full web management UI built in.

Install Python via winget and set up an isolated virtual environment per project -- the standard, officially recommended way to avoid dependency conflicts between projects.

A mature, widely-deployed open-source message broker — decouples different parts of an application by passing messages/jobs between them reliably, instead of having services call each other directly.

RadiusDesk is an open-source, web-based management front end for FreeRADIUS, used to run hotspots and manage network access for routers/APs (MikroTik, CoovaChilli, and more) from one dashboard.

A free, open-source, in-memory key-value store used as a cache, session store, or message broker by countless self-hosted apps -- installed from Ubuntu's package repository.

Redmine is a mature, flexible project management and issue-tracking tool built on Ruby on Rails; its official documentation covers installing it from source rather than via Docker.

Rocket.Chat is a self-hosted team chat platform with channels, video calls, and federation, aimed at organizations that want a Slack alternative they fully control.

Magisk is the standard modern tool for rooting Android devices in a way that can hide itself from apps that check for root — this is a conceptual overview of the process, since exact steps vary significantly by device manufacturer and model.

Switch a Linux server from password SSH login to key-based authentication only -- removes the single most common attack surface (brute-forced passwords) on any internet-facing server.

Samba implements the SMB/CIFS protocol, letting a Linux server share folders that appear as normal network drives to Windows, MacOS, and other Linux machines.

Seafile is a high-performance, self-hosted file sync and share platform (a self-hosted Dropbox alternative) with optional client-side encrypted libraries and built-in online document editing via SeaDoc.

Shaarli is a minimalist, database-free, self-hosted bookmarking and link-archiving service, officially shipped as a container image on GitHub Container Registry.

Shizuku lets ordinary apps use higher-privilege system APIs (normally reserved for ADB or root) with your explicit per-app permission — a middle ground between a completely stock device and full root access.

A self-hosted URL shortener with a full REST API, visit-tracking analytics, and an optional web UI (Shlink Web Client) — your own private bit.ly.

A popular alternative to traditional RAID for home media servers: MergerFS pools multiple independent drives into one folder tree, while SnapRAID adds parity protection you can add drives to (or recover from) one at a time.

Snipe-IT is a free, open-source IT asset management system for tracking hardware, licenses, accessories, and consumables, including checkout history, depreciation, and audit logs.

SonarQube (now split into the free SonarQube Community Build and commercial SonarQube Server) is a static analysis platform that continuously inspects code quality, bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells across dozens of languages.

Why some Android apps ship as several files instead of one -- what a base APK, a split config APK, and an .aab actually are, and why installing them in the wrong way causes a crash or an install failure.

A self-hosted, all-in-one PDF toolkit — merge, split, compress, convert, OCR, watermark, and edit PDFs from a browser, with no files ever leaving your own server.

Strapi is an open-source, JavaScript-based headless CMS; while Strapi doesn't ship an official image, its documentation provides a maintained production Dockerfile and Compose file for containerized deployment.

Add swap space on a small VPS (512MB-2GB RAM) to prevent the OOM killer from taking down services during a memory spike, especially during package installs/builds.

Syncthing is a continuous, decentralized peer-to-peer file synchronization tool that replicates folders directly between your own devices over an encrypted connection, with no central server or cloud in the middle.