alt Hacker NewsMy Mac mini m1 is a fantastic home server.
Years ago I realized running a 100W PC all the time was REALLY expensive, so I switched to an old linux laptop at 30W (about $4/month). That helped, but I moved to the m1 mac specifically for the power efficiency. It does all the things my linux server did, and it does them at 6W (75¢/month).
I've found no competitor with similar performance that can run in such a low power footprint. M4 mini's are way better at power/performance, and I imagine their price is about to come way down since the M6 mini just got announced.
Software-wise, it's different, but mostly equivalent. Homebrew or macports has a similar software inventory to debian. And Apple's container framework is a welcome improvement over colima for running most container workloads.
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It takes almost 8 years for $3.25/mo of electricity savings to break even with a $300 difference in up front cost. Assuming the time value of money is zero, that is.
That too, it's either Mac mini or Rpi if you care about power, and the Rpi is very limited.
My home server is an ASUS NUC 14 Essential which idles at 5W with a bunch of services running. Its peak performance is probably less than the Mac Mini, but the hardware is cheap (at least it was before RAM/storage got expensive) and it’s a great platform to run Linux on.