Hi, I wanted to start selfhosting and I'd like to have your opinion on something that I'm struggling to decide.

I don't plan to tinker too much with my system, I've been a Linux tinkerer myself some time ago but now I'd like to setup something that's really bulletproof and then leave it running (ofc I know I'll have to do a bit of bugfixing now and then), not replacing hardware ideally for >= 10 years.

This is why I'm planning to use TrueNAS, and that's why I'm planning to buy a UGREEN DXP2800: has two 3,5" HDD bays (4TB should be enough for me for the next 8-10 years, so I'll have two 4TB disks in RAID1 or mirror or whatever is recommended). Only problem I have with this machine is that it only has 1 RAM slot, and I guess 8 GB isn't enough if I use zfs. So I'll have to upgrade to either 16 or 32 GB. Now I did my research and from my understanding 16GB seems to be enough, but it would be such a waste having to replace the whole RAM if it turns out it isn't enough.

For reference, I don't plan on having more than 7-8 services running: Immich, Nextcloud+office, firefly, audiobookshelf, paperless and a maybe few more if they're useful. I value responsiveness but it's ok if some things take longer to process (thinking immich ML, or stuff like transcoding)

I'm very interested to know your opinion:

• is the dxp2800 a good choice?
• should I go with 16 or 32 GB RAM?

And a little extra

• how much ssd space do you recommend for high speed data? is 500gb enough?

Thank you so much!

I couldn't find a way to cross-post from reddit, so I'll just copy-paste the post:

I know this was already posted this week, but I feel I should clarify what's going on here.

If you're a GNOME user, GNOME needs your help. The past few years have been financially difficult for the GNOME Foundation. The last year in particular has been really challenging. We have re-launched our donation page with an explicit focus on recurring donations:

https://donate.gnome.org/

Historically, almost all GNOME donations came from maintainers, not users. That's not just nuts... it's totally broken. Many of these folks grind 80 hour weeks, for years. Many of them are volunteers. They shouldn't be the ones giving the Foundation money, they should be the ones being paid by the Foundation (in the form of grants, contracts, etc). I argued to the GNOME Foundation Board this month that our revenue model was inside-out. They agreed.

In the near-term, we just need to make sure GNOME stays afloat. The GNOME Foundation supplies all of GNOME's development infrastructure (including GitLab and CI/CD), manages all development grants/contracts, runs Flathub, runs GUADEC, manages internship financing, and supplies travel grants for contributors. It would really suck if the wheels fell off ... because all of this matters.

But in the medium-term, the goal is for the Foundation to use recurring donations to really grow GNOME and push development harder than ever before. I want to see us absolutely crush the proprietary desktops and then win the mobile market. For that, the "medium-term" needs to happen sooner than later. That's why I'm so focused on recurring donations in this post:

https://blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/06/26/donate-less/

Additionally, I want to be very clear that I'm being entirely sincere when I say "donate less." Donate with a floor, not a ceiling. Keep the number as low as makes sense for you. Because the goal is longevity, not single big donations, we really need you to donate a value that's trivial to you: the price of a coffee, the price of a frivolous meal out that you wouldn't think twice about buying. That sort of thing. Don't jeopardize your own financial comfort for ours — GNOME has millions of users who can potentially donate if you can't. We just need to reach them. (You can help us by pointing people to this post.)

Hope that clears things up! Feel free to ask questions if it doesn't.