Plus they always try to hide how stuff works behind the scenes so that day that upgrade script has a bug and fails, it’s hard to revert to a working stage.

Yunohost is creating backups for apps that are being updated. If update fails, it automatically reverts. Yes, it works, I checked.

those projects get eventually abandoned,

Yunohost is here for years now, and it does not look like it will be abondoned any time soon.

I use a Yunohost for more about 1,5 year. I love for stability and simplicity but also openess for more pro users. I have my own backup solution that works great. Yunohost isn’t popular but has big catalogue. Some of the apps are not present in catalogue, so I use Docker on second device to get them.

Nextcloud is hard to install in manual way (even sometimes with Docker). As far I know, both Snap and Yunohost versions of Nextcloud are solid. I used Snap version on the cheapest Linode VPS, and it worked fine, especially when I doubled the SWAP to 1 GB. Now I use Yunohost version and I have only good time with it. It is super stable, fast and reliable. I used Nextcloud_ynh on HP 800 Mini G3 with i5-6500t and now on Asrock Mini PC with Ryzen 7 5700g. It is working just great.

If you don’t want to use Nextcloud, you ca install Vikunja for kanban and tasks. For notes Hedgedoc can be great.

I think you can go with Yunohost. It is easy to start selfhosting and exposing services to the web. I use it for more than a year, and it is super cool. Especially I love the fact, that it is easy for newcomers, but also it is opened for customisation for more pro users. Yunohost provides domain with ddns, Fail2Ban and tells which ports should be opened (80 and 443 is all you need, maybe another one for ssh). It also provides SSO for hiding services that do not use authentication.

Adguard Home works really bad on RPi Zero and not as fast as PiHole on Rpi3B+. That’s why Adguard is heavier for me.

I used both and Adguard looks more buggy for me. And also it is heavier.

Asrock X300 Mini with 2x HDD 2 TB 2,5" drives in Raid1, NVMe Samsung, 1 TB 2,5" HDD connected via USB and Zigbee gateway

It has place for two drives - one NVMe 2280 and one SATA 2,5". If you want something bigger, but still Mini, You can buy Asrock X300 DeskMini with AM4 socket. I have this with Ryzen 7 5700g. It offers two slots for 2280 NVMe drives and two slots for 2,5" SATA drives.

Yunohost or Snap. Snap catalogue of server apps is small but it offfers Home Assistant, Adguard home and Plex.

Maybe HP 800 Mini with i5-6500t? I had this, and now it is available in Poland for around 500 PLN (~112 EUR). Something like: https://allegro.pl/oferta/hp-800-g2-dm-i5-6500t-8gb-ssd-120gb-w10p-mini-13752172316?fromVariant=13752110554 I had the same model but G3 (different chassis) Power consumption was low. With a 1TB USB HDD connected, power consumption was 7-8 watts.

Yes. I have Orange Pi Zero 2 with 1 GB of RAM running Ubuntu. This is actually very powerful machine, more powerful than my Raspberry Pi 3B+. i bought it for about 180 polish zloty (around 40 euros). I use it for printing server with Ghostscript printer app installed via Snap. I also tried Wireguard and MongoDB - everything works fine. it works really well, but it sits around 50 C on CPU, so it can get hot.

Wallabag for read-it-later articles and HedgeDoc for md notes

It will not be that great like on Raspberry Pi, but Mini PC are also very low on energy. For example,. Wyse 5070 with J5005 idles around 3-5 W, which is really great. i had HP 800 Mini G3 that idled ~7-8W. Mini PCs are more powerful, expandable and can use normal SSD Drive. For selfhosting they are better, but in some places Raspberry Pi (or alternative like Orange Pi) will be better, especially when you need something small and really low power

I don’t know when you tried Nextcloud snap. I was using NC Snap on low tier VPS back in 2021 and 2022. For me it was really good experience, and I saw that a lot of people had the same opinion. Unfortunately, snapcraft lacks a lot of apps and even in that small group there are only a few apps that are supported.

Snap apps could be good for a lot of ‘just works’ stuff, but the app catalogue is tiny. Hardly any of the app catalogue is kept up to date.

I just telling why Yunohost will not switch to Docker. Running normal Docker app wouldn’t be coherent with yunohost package managment. And how you can see, no containerization brings problem with updating some apps, not only with Lemmy, but - if I remember right - with Wallabag. Yunohost way of things has advantages and disadvantages. I use Yunohost for more than a year and I am not planning switch to Docker.

Yunohost uses his own package managing and package format based on native app builds. Migrating to Docker would simply be a waste of this work. Furthermore, Yunohost is a great alternative to hosting with Docker. if Yunohost migrated to Docker, it would not be an alternative, but just a slightly simpler front-end.

But yeah, some sort of containerization/sandboxing in Yunohost would be nice.

I host Nextcloud and it is huge life saving tool. I use it for backuping photos, hosting calendars, tasks, contacts and RSS. I use Nextcloud Deck as Trello replacement. Nextcloud can also replace Google Docs.

I use Nextcloud photos. It is far from perfect but it is OK. I hate lack of good Mobile App.

Waitin’ for Kbin Yunohost script :-)

Yunohost is great on real hardware too