I have an old ThinkPad-ish laptop gathering dust and a Raspberry Pi 4 on the wishlist for small self-hosting projects. Hot take: the old laptop might actually be the smarter, cheaper choice for a year or two. Is that insane, and what are the real tradeoffs I should be planning for?

My setup constraints: apartment, limited noise tolerance, dynamic ISP IP, budget under $100 for upgrades, want to run a few containers (Nextcloud, a tiny media server, home automation MQTT, maybe a reverse proxy). Practical points I care about: uptime, power draw, drive reliability, backups, security, and being able to recover if the thing dies.

Concrete checklist I would follow if I used the laptop:

  • Hardware: swap in an SSD if it has an HDD, 8+ GB RAM if you can, disable/replace a swollen battery, and dust out the fans. Old CPUs are fine for low-load containers. Expect 15-30W idle vs ~3-7W for a Pi.
  • OS: Debian/Ubuntu server, or Proxmox if you want VMs, or just plain Docker/docker-compose. Use a minimal install and disable desktop stuff.
  • Networking: give it a DHCP reservation or static on the router, set up a reverse proxy (nginx or Caddy) and TLS via Let’s Encrypt, consider Cloudflare or dynamic DNS if no static IP.
  • Backups: local backups with borg or restic to an external drive plus an encrypted remote backup (cheap VPS or offsite storage). Snapshot your important containers and DBs daily.
  • Power and reliability: use a cheap UPS if you care about graceful shutdowns - laptops have batteries but they fail; a UPS also protects the SSD. Monitor SMART for drive wear.
  • Security: SSH with keys only, fail2ban or sshguard, keep automatic security updates enabled for the kernel and critical packages, and run containers as non-root where possible.
  • Troubleshooting: check dmesg/syslog for thermal throttling, use htop/iostat to find bottlenecks, run smartctl to check drives, and use journalctl for service logs.

When to pick a Pi instead: if you absolutely need <10W power draw, want smaller form factor, or need a quiet 24/7 device with modern low-power silicon and easy HAT support. When to pick the laptop: when you want more CPU/RAM, built-in AC power handling, and easier local upgrades for cheap.

So: am I missing anything obvious that would make the laptop a stupid choice here? Or any gotchas from people who actually ran servers off old laptops long term?

  • Melon Husk™@sh.itjust.works
    7·
    6 hours ago

    I mean, that old thinkpad has been dreaming of a job with purpose for years, hasn’t it? Good to see it getting off the bench. Your checklist is solid, no reason not to make use of what you’ve got!