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)
don’t have an old pc lying around? I literally built my first server while I was jobless, (I did purchase HDDs when I was employed, though). That same server has a cpu, mobo, ram and case that are well over 15 years old now, only the PSU and storage are new.
I’m hosting a discord alternative called sharkord. Initially I just hosted it on my home server, but I couldn’t open ports for voice chat so I did move to a VPS with akami (linode). At most it’s costing me $5 CAD a month.
It’s wayyy lighter to run compared to lemmy, because servers aren’t federated. I know, different application, but just wanted to provide a point of reference.
oh yeah, and I don’t know, but I only run linux, and almost never shutdown my main PC anyways, only reboot for updates or shutdown for maintenance. I could 100% just host things on my main PC, but it’s only connected to the internet via wi-fi, which is why I went the separate pc route. If you need parts, see what people are willing to give away.