My server is a phone now
A tech enthusiast repurposed their CMF Phone 1 to act as a home server, replacing a paid VPS to save costs. While the project successfully runs several web applications, the user encountered significant hardware compatibility issues when attempting to install a custom Linux distribution.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing trend of 'edge computing' and the creative reuse of consumer hardware for personal infrastructure.
For a while, my personal infrastructure lived on a small Hetzner VPS. It ran a few web apps, a remote browser called Surf , Caddy, and the usual supporting cast. Nothing particularly serious. It worked, I just didn’t like paying for it.
One of the apps I run, Surf, made the compromise difficult to ignore. The cheapest shared machines were fine until Chrome had real work to do, at which point they felt starved. Dedicated CPU machines fix that, but cost enough each month to make a personal browser feel like a questionable financial commitment.
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