You could pihole
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Some great light lightweight apps for a 4GB Pi:
- Homeassistant
- Fresh RSS
- Paperless NGX
- Syncthing
- PiHole or Adguard home
- Syncthing
mine is my reverse proxy, using the nginx proxy manager docker install method
PiHole is a pretty light load, as are Home Assistant and Music Assistant. Frigate starts to make some heat, so don't expect to get a full blown video classification / recording system.
Airsonic music server... There are a few quirks getting it all set up properly, but once it works, it just seems to work forever. Samba file sharing server. Also miniDLNA server can make it easy to watch your movie collection on a tv. The airsonic DLNA doesn't seem to be working currently. I also have a few mastodon bots running from a Pi4. Also could run a tor relay node, which would make it so it's less idle. I have a lot of stuff on my Pi4 and it is still mostly idle most of the time. Thats fine though. For me it's not a huge problem, since overall, my goal is to make it use as little power as possible for all those things. I think thats the whole point is to really use the most lightweight computer that can do what you need. If you just need the print server, you could always get a lower power Pi so you can really optimize how much power needs to be used and maybe even do some sort of Wake on LAN setup so it can be sleeping while not in use.
As a general thing because I found myself trying to justify my Gear Acquisition Syndrome -- it's a good idea to split services across devices, rather than having some monolithic home server (which is where most people start). That way if one box goes down, it doesn't take down your whole stack.
If you have some machines scattered about doing different things, it might be time to consider logically grouping services and splitting them across that hardware.
You can run an (emulated) IBM mainframe on it!
I use my Pi 4B as a DVR for movies and OTA television (MythTV).
There are other tools that handle playback better (OSMC/Kodi, etc) but Myth's configuration and handling of recording schedules is incredibly powerful. Conflict management works well and it can record multiple streams off the same tuner so conflicts are reduced in the first place.
let it run dwarf fortress from within the terminal, then ssh into it from wherever you are so you can play df from anywhere in the world. i did this at work.
Joplin notes. A really nice notetaking app you can selfhost. Simple enough but stil verry advanced.
irks me that it’s mostly idling
Well it's a small processor and relatively efficient one at that so... how about going the opposite direction? How about measuring the power draw on idle? With other task? I don't actually know if that architecture handles that but I saw some things on the do https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100095/0002/functional-description/power-management/dynamic-power-management?lang=en
Also what about using a RPi Zero instead?
I'll look into how to make it draw less power. Thanks! That didn't really cross my mind.
Why not use RPi Zero? That would require buying additional hardware. I'd rather use what I already have.
require buying additional hardware.
Trade with someone?
AdGuard Home (I prefer it to PiHole)
OtterWiki
Wireguard
Forgejo
Tandoor
Can I please ask why you prefer Adguard over Pihole?
The sd card in my raspberry 3b recently died, and my pihole with it. I am now using Adguard but not sure it's working well for me, consider going back. What's the winning argument for you?
I find the interface feels more modern and interactive, I didn't like how static PiHole felt with adding to a list then manually restarting Gravity.
AGH has support for more list types, it has more features built-in, such as DNS over TLS so I can use it on my phone even when I'm not home.
And personally I feel like its less buggy, I've never encountered a problem on AGH, whereas I did on PiHole.
Interesting points, thank you.
Today I wanted to block everything with facebook and Instagram, it looks like I am hand-editing a config file to do so. And it applies to the entire network; AGH has no concept of user groups. Am I missing something really obvious?
That would be something you do within the Client Settings page. You can have custom settings that are separate from the Global Default.
Skimmed the title. Brain registered words "rpi" and "linux" underneath it. Instant reaction: "Not another app package format please". 😶🌫️
I should spend more time reading properly & less time being an old man yelling at tech.
Get yourself and adsb antenna and feed flightaware, flightradar24, and adsbexchange. Help track the skies!
Pihole, homeassistant, a music server using moodeaudio
Another vote for Pi-hole here. I don’t know how I lived without it before!
Does PiHole ever break a family member’s browsing, and then they don’t know to fix the issue because it would involve understanding opening up the PiHole web interface?
Yes, that does sometimes happen but the frequency depends on the blocking list used, or if multiple lists are used. When a family member encounters something like this, I can usually quite quickly identify the relevant blocked item and whitelist it.
And if you aren’t home or available?
Well, it takes a while longer to fix. The only times it’s happened (perhaps twice in 6 months) it’s been when a family member has been trying to buy something from a website. I can also access the Pi-hole remotely and—in the worst case scenario—just turn off blocking altogether for a short period.
Thanks for sharing.
It does look like there’s a way to use PiHole personally for those who share the network with those who don’t want it: leave default DNS server setttings alone except for your own devices.
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Paperless ngx
Jellyfin music server. It needs about 1.2 GB of RAM for itself, plus the system.
My PI with podman jellyfin and flatnotes is sitting at 600 MB ram
Mine needs 1.3 GB with an itunes library of 160 gb.
Ah yes my collection is less than few GB that play I guess
You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.
If you don't want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.
Another vote for PiHole. It keeps your home network cleaner by ignoring the ads.
On my Rpi4B I run syncthing 24/7. It acts as my sync hub. All other machines are connected to it.
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