Would a cheap, used raspberry pi 3 make for a good test server for following random self hosted tutorials?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

In my self hosting journey many time I’ve longed for an extra machine I can use to try following tutorials on setting up samba shares, home assistant, what have you without having to worry about messing up my main machine and having to clean up after myself. As for acquiring such hardware on the cheap, I keep reading how the laptopocalypse w/ Windows 10 end of life will flood the markets w/ literally unlimited free e-waste bro!!! But my own experience hunting these EOL once in a lifetime deals has been more frownie face than happy face. Lots of $100+ listings and, idk that just seems like a lot to ask for something like that.

So just for fun I searched eBay for “raspberry pi” and came across this listing for a raspberry pi 3 w/ 1 GB RAM for $25. 1 GB of RAM seems like not very much, but then again I’m not trying to break the sound barrier here, I just want something that can sit on my desk basically unnoticed and hook it up to my KVM switch so I can switch to it from time to time, like whenever I want to try following a tutorial.

I’ve also kinda always had a little bit of envy from not being in the raspberry pi club, so this is my shot at getting into the club. I think I’m going to spring for this one, so my question for the audience is, but like honestly am I about to piss $25 down the drain? Would this be good enough for my purposes or is the 1 GB of RAM going to bottleneck me like a boss?

Sorry for the run on sentences, my brain’s tired today.

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poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Don’t look online, ask friends and family if someone has an old laptop you can get for free. Very likely someone does, especially if you are ok with a bad battery and/or a broken screen.

A RPi3 can work, but it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86.

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- Eldritch@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yes, this is one of the few real valid arguments against something like a pi 3. Outside architecture issues they are fantastic to learn on.
  
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- yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  it being ARM based will cause various headaches when learning compared to something x86
  
  Hmm, this is just enough to give me pause. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to think on this some more and maybe do a little more research.
  
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  - ramenshaman@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I can confirm the ARM issue, I’m a newbie and I recently set up a NAS on an RPi 5.
    
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  - Eldritch@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Definitely take a look at what you’re looking to host and what it supports. Support for raspberry Pi and their Debian based pi OS is surprisingly widespread and robust. Not always first-party top-level support robust, but surprisingly adequate for a $35, $50 SBC.
    
    Worst case scenario is still a solid introduction to open source software. Downloading, compiling, installing, et cetera. Some of my earliest projects on the pi involved that. Using the camera module along with the video for Linux subsystem, which wasn’t included or packaged under Raspian at the time at least. Go git project. Make, make install, and party
    
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  - Cort@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    eBay has plenty of x86/x64 computers that don’t technically support Windows 11. An old Lenovo desktop/sff with a 7th gen i7 could be a pretty cheap entry point. 8th Gen and up will be more expensive since they can still run windows 11
    
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  - NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Can confirm this. I experienced this on my Pi3 recently with a VPN. I mean, it wasn’t the end of the world. Just that the specific docker container I wanted to use wasn’t compatible because of ARM so I had to go with a different one.
    
    It could be bad for specific things that are more obscure. But I use my Pi for PiHole adblocking and VPN and that’s it. My other stuff lives on another machine and the Pi is set up for redundancy and it’s more reliable if power outages happen since power in means power on by default.
    
    If you can get one for cheap and just want it for the same reason, could be alright.
    
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rmuk@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
No.

Unless there’s something about the RPi that you really want - GPIO, say - it’s not a good choice, especially not the 1GB model you mentioned. Virtually any used desktop or laptop PC from the last fifteen years will be more useful; if you’ve not done so already, search EBay for “USFF”. Those are desktop PCs the size of paperback books. Businesses love them and have them in fleets which means the marketplace tends to get cycled out naturally after a few years and can be had for €30 and up. Unlike a RPi 3, they usually come with storage included (and a proper SSD/HD rather than an SD card), a good quality power supply, plenty of I/O and, if course, a nice solid protective case.

Example: ebay.us/m/TxL4yR

Slap PROXMOX on that and you’ll have the seed of a solid home lab. With 8GB RAM you’ll have enough to run VMs for OpenWRT, Home Assistant, Yuno Host, and still have enough resources left over for your Debian tinkering box. Plus, by using PROXMOX you do away with the need for a KVM since you can either SSH into the VM or use PROXMOX’s web UI to access the console and use a GUI if that’s more your speed.

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- Khanzarate@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Dang I didn’t know they got that cheap.
  
  Thanks for the search advice.
  
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- yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Gotcha, although I’m in the US, so would something like this DELL WYSE 5070 THIN CLIENT Intel Celeron J4105 1.50GHZ 8GB RAM 64GB SSD No OS be comparable?
  
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  - rmuk@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, that’s pretty good. The only things I’d be wary of with that particular listing are that it doesn’t come with a power supply (these normally take laptop-style PSUs) and 64GB of storage might not be enough once you start to get to grips with it though you could easily upgrade the NVMe SSD (or hook up an external USB drive).
    
    But aside from that it’s a smart little system and will handle a the setup I described with no issues. The J4105 can be sluggish with multitasking in a desktop environment but for ‘headless’ setups it’s excellent and uses very little power.
    
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altphoto@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Get a cheap mini PC instead.

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habitualTartare@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
1GB is probably enough to run one basic service without a GUI. If you want anything more than that you’re going to probably end up running out of RAM and hitting the SWAP file–grinding everything to a snail’s pace. Useful projects here might be to add smarts to something dumb around the house or making an old printer support wireless printing via cups.

Like others have said if you want to tinker, a virtual machine via virtualbox or VMware is free for your use case.

If you strongly prefer hardware, an old PC will probably be cheap or free.

If you really want a pi you’ll probably have to look for something that has at minimum 4Gb (which will be easy to outgrow), recommending 8GB+. Note that raspberry pi’s run best on the official power plug as a USB-a to micro/c won’t provide enough power to be stable and will cause weird issues or crash the pi under heavier loads or when drawing power from the pins.

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empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
1gb ram is crap. Hardware capabilities aside it’s just not enough to run anything usable for real hosting. Get an old office machine for 50-100 with 8gb or more of memory and it will do infinitely better.

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owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As long as you don’t use a DE on it, a pi3 is great for experimenting with server software. I still use my 3b for plenty of things.

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cenzorrll@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Rpis are great for always on things with low power use but not if you have many low power use things. But you would really be feeling that 1GB of ram, and microSDs kind of suck to run off of. I would honestly save the $25 and put it toward one of the $100 tiny/mini/micros.

I would not steer you away from an RPI if you don’t have one, they are very useful and fun, but if you’re looking for learning about self hosting, you’re probably going to end up getting something more powerful anyway

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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
$25 is too much for a used 1gb pi 3. A new pi 5 with 1gb is $45 and way better. But, most ppl start with a vps.

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FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You’re not going to be able to do much self hosting with 1GB of ram.

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minoche@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As others have said, 1 GB RAM isn’t enough. It also isn’t a good deal. You can get old NUCs for $30-40 with 8 GB.

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towerful@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Oh, and on the “fail often” thing…
Get a basic/old/free pc/laptop and install Proxmox on it.
Loads of tutorials out there, but the basic installer will get you to a “I’m learning” stage.

Create a VM, install Debian, play around.
Then: create a new VM, install Debian, create a snapshot, play around until it does what you want, restore the snapshot, do the steps that got you from vanilla to what you want. Create snapshots along the way as checkpoints.

Proxmox is amazing for learning VMs and server things

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towerful@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Raspberry pis are an easy intro to actually using computers (instead of using something like windows).
Raspbian is great (based on Debian) and there is a HUGE community for it.

So yeh, it’s a great started for $25, as long as you have a PSU and SD Card. And an hdmi cable + monitor + keyboard at your disposal (and a mouse if you are installing a desktop environment (IE something like windows, whereas headless is a full screen CLI).
And don’t get your hopes up for a windows replacement.

But… Why not run a Virtual Machine? If you have a windows machine, run VirtualBox, create a VM and install Debian on it?
That’s free. You can tinker and play.
And the only thing you are missing from an actual raspberry pi is that it isn’t a standalone device (IE your desktop has to be on for it to be running), and it doesn’t have GPIO (ie hardware pins. And if this is your goal, there are other ways).

If you really really want a computer that is on all the time running Linux (Debian, a derivative (like raspbian) or some other distro) - aka a server - then there are plenty of other options where the only drawback is lack of GPIO (which, in my experience, is rarely a drawback).
And that is literally any computer you can get your hands on. Because the raspberry pi trades A LOT for its form factor, the ethernet speed is limited, the bus speed is limited (impacting USB and ethernet (and ram?)), the SD card is slower and will fail faster than any HDD/SSD. The benefit is the GPIO and the very low power draw - rarely actually a benefit.

I’d say, play around with some virtual box VMs. See what you want, other than Fear Of Missing Out (things like PiHole? They run on Debian, or even in a docker container). Then see if you actually want a home server, and what you want to run on it.
It’s likely you won’t want a raspberry pi, but a $150 mini pc that can actually do what you want.

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irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Sure, I use them from time to time in my lab to spin up test runs. I also have a cheap VPS ($25/year) that I do the same on. You could also use VMWare Workstation Pro (free) or Oracle Virtual Box (free), on your desktop/laptop, to spin up a Ubuntu or other server, and test to your heart’s content. I would think the 1 gb spec on the RPi 3 might limit you somewhat on what you could test run, but I have surprised myself as to what I can jam into an RPi 3. PiMyLifeUP has a ton of tutorials for the RPi. Might want to take a glance to see what’s possible, but, for an initial investment of $25 seems like a doable opportunity.

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scott@lem.free.as ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
In theory, yes.

Just keep in mind that the CPU is ARM-based and not all container images come with ARM variants.

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Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So the rasp Pi is very versatile. It won’t work as well for certain things but you can also hook things up to it that you wouldn’t be able to with a normal computer. It’s also tiny. That being said, I’d just spend a few bucks more and get a new one. Raspb pi 3 with 1g of ram is very slow.

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captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I learned how to Linux on a Raspberry Pi. That is, in fact, what they’re for. I’ve got one (a Pi 2) that sits on my LAN with a hard drive attached as one part of my backup solution.

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sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yes

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