15 free open-source tools I installed on day one of my homelab (and still use daily)

When I set up my first homelab, I installed 30+ tools in the first weekend. Half of them got uninstalled within a month. Here's the 15 I kept and still use every day — all free, all open-source, all self-hosted.

File sharing & access

Synology DSM (or TrueNAS, Unraid): the NAS OS itself
Syncthing: peer-to-peer file sync between my phone, laptop, desktop. No central server.
SMB / NFS / WebDAV: the boring standards. Pick the protocol that matches your clients. (For Windows mounting WebDAV without Explorer's quirks: ScsDriver $5.50 lifetime.)

Backups

Restic (or Borg): deduplicated, encrypted backups to anywhere (S3, SFTP, local disk)
Duplicati: web UI on top of restic. If you want a GUI.
rsnapshot: rsync-based snapshots. Boring, reliable.

Productivity

Nextcloud or FileRun: Dropbox replacement. Calendar + contacts + files.
Joplin server: notes sync across devices. Evernote replacement.
Standard Notes: end-to-end encrypted notes. Paid tier is worth it.
Paperless-ngx: document archiving. Scan paper, OCR it, tag it, forget it.

Media

Jellyfin: movies, TV, music. The Plex alternative without the licensing drama.
Calibre: ebook library. Auto-fetch metadata, send to Kindle.
Audiobookshelf: audiobooks + podcasts. Multi-device sync.
Immich: Google Photos replacement. Still alpha but usable.

Networking & access

Tailscale: VPN that just works. No port forwarding, no firewall rules.
WireGuard (the underlying tool): if you want to set up Tailscale yourself.
Pi-hole: network-wide ad blocker. DNS-level, easy install.
Nginx Proxy Manager: reverse proxy with Let's Encrypt. Pretty UI on top of nginx.

Monitoring & dashboards

Uptime Kuma: status page for all your services. Ping every 30s, alert if down.
Grafana + Prometheus: the gold standard. Steep learning curve, but worth it.
Netdata: real-time per-machine metrics. Free tier is generous.
Dozzle: real-time Docker log viewer. Replaces docker logs -f for humans.

Misc

Homepage: dashboard for all your services. Pretty homepage with links.
Homarr: similar, more configurable.
Mealie: recipe manager. Meal-planning, shopping lists.
Firefly III: personal finance. Track spending, budgets, net worth.

Installation tips from 18 months of mistakes

Don't start with docker-compose everything. My first setup had 40 containers, half crashed weekly. Start with 5 critical services, get them stable, then add more.
Backups first, services second. I set up Restic on day 1. Has saved me twice.
Document in your runbook. A docker-compose.yml in your home folder won't tell you why you chose it in 6 months. A README next to it will.
Pick a port scheme. I use 8xxx for dashboards, 9xxx for monitoring, 3xxx for media. Saves hunting.
Tailscale before exposing ports. 90% of my services are reachable only via Tailscale. Saves the security anxiety.