I have no job, so the gift cards I have are prepaid and only have a few dollars on them. I should get a job soon, but in the meantime, I want to run my own Lemmy instance. I know this is probably a stupid question, but is there a way to do so? If I run it on just my computer, it’ll shut down when my computer turns off, and there is an old computer my parents have but they won’t let me use it because they don’t wanna buy a new charger (The charger cord is broken)
I just wanna say that Lemmy isn’t exactly light on resources. 4GB of RAM are barely enough, even on a single user instance. I don’t think free tiers will offer more
Racknerd always has good deals. You get get a vps for as low as $11/year.
Here’s a link (no affiliation with them. Been using them since 2020 when I grabbed one of these deals)
https://www.racknerd.com/BlackFriday/
(Don’t worry that it says black Friday. You should still be able to get the deal)
Oracle does it.
Be wary of oracle free tier. They’re known to just delete your vps for no reason.
oracle also is in the process of destroying cnn and any free press as well as make sure every citizen is being watched and their data is stored on oracle servers.
Start with experimenting on your own computer. You can install Docker and setup Lemmy fx. Any reason you can’t keep your computer running?
There’s also IONOS with their £1 and £2 server: https://www.ionos.co.uk/servers/vps
Oracle Cloud isn’t available in my location by the way, and I tried Google Cloud, it keeps crashing when I do an instance and it wants me to pay all of a sudden.
I wouldn’t start with anything involving user-generated content… Otherwise, it could easily be misused, and the police might end up at YOUR door.
Thanks
I might
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Get new equipment and always run my old computer
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Get a Raspberry Pi
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Keep running my new computer forever
Skip the pie as it is really terrible for the money you are spending
Instead, find a old workstation and setup Linux.
Pi is a good option because of it’s low power draw.
However I find used mini pc’s and Small Form Factor desktops to be a better value and their idle power is similar to the latest Pi (while costing about the same as a new Pi).
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web PSU Power Supply Unit SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) nginx Popular HTTP server
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