I call BS on OP, just another ragebait made-up story.

Forced restarts haven’t been a thing for years, unless the OP somehow badly setup their machine.

Status: Hired

There’s a million ways to do anything when self hosting, so I’ll just talk about what I have and if you interested just reply.

I only host a few services for now: Invidious, CloudTube, Redlib, FreshRSS. All of them as docker containers, this helps in quickly updating them and isolating their configurations. I have a few TB of disk space on the server itself that I can access through SMB3 shares, so I don’t have a proper NAS yet. Probably will do so at some point when I need it.

As for hardware, I’m using an HP mini-pc with

• Ryzen 5 PRO 3400GE
• 16GB DDR4
• 256GB boot drive (NVME), 2TB storage drive (HDD)

This mini-pc can literally be opened by removing 1 screw, so hardware changes/cleaning can’t get easier. I installed Debian on it

As for remote access, I use twingate instead of self-hosted wireguard. Mostly because I’m using my ISPs router and they like to reset it whenever they want. I’m also not confortable opening ports on the router. Twingate covers my use case completely so I never went back to this. I can map a custom domain to the server’s IP and this meant I just switch on twingate when I’m out and can access it seamlessly.

I think a few more details are needed to get you a clear alternative:

• Which devices you want to cast from? what content you want to cast (DRM content like netflix, and/or your own media)? what kind of TV you have?

In my case after degoogling, I use mainly apple devices besides my windows pc. 2 of my TVs have AirPlay built in, so there’s no issue casting anything. If your TV is rather recent it’s likely to have it too.

The third TV is tricky, it’s an older 4k LG. I have a linux box connected to it and installed UxPlay in it. It only works with AirPlay “mirroring” so you kinda need an app that can treat the TV as a second monitor. Otherwise the mirroring won’t cover the entire TV screen. I’m still assuming apple devices here, but there’s OutPlayer and nPlayer in the appstore that can do this. It does support sound-only casting, so if it’s music you want it should be able to direct cast from your apps.

The second caveat for UxPlay is that it only works with DRM-free content (youtube, self hosted media). For DRM content I haven’t found a nice alternative for the old TV , so I use its built in apps (netflix, amazon prime). Kodi exists, but the plug-ins support for streaming sites isn’t good, often getting stuck to low-res content.

I’m guessing buying an apple tv/fire stick/roku is the only alternative for DRM content casting. I also explored the idea of “degoogling” my unused chromecast 3rd gen, but absolutely nothing exists for this and it just collects dust in a drawer.

Same, I’d take it any day over VLC because of native dark mode. VLC’s themes are janky and weird-looking.

RIP cheems

Those who are still on the ‘apple bad’ train like to forget they are running an OS built by an ads company.

Every phone manufacturer has some bad shit, I choose to stick with apple cuz I already have a big library of paid stuff.