Say Goodbye to Subscriptions! I Run 20+ Docker Services on One Mini PC, Covering Media, Productivity, and Security

In this era of “everything is a subscription,” wanting to watch a movie, convert a PDF, or take a note often means facing one membership fee after another.

To take back data sovereignty and to put my idle bandwidth to full use, I picked up an all-in-one home mini PC and deployed 27 services with Docker. From an automated media center to a private office workflow, this little machine running 24/7 has completely changed my digital life.

What’s more, even with all these services running, daily CPU usage is only around 15%. Today I’ll show off my list of Docker containers.

🎮 Part 1: Command Center and Visualization (Dashboard)

This part is my “storefront.” To avoid memorizing tedious IP:port combinations, I deployed a navigation page and management panels.

1. Homepage

Image: ghcr.io/gethomepage/homepage:latest
Summary: A very modern, fast, and highly customizable static dashboard.
How I use it: This is my browser home page. It pulls information such as Jellyfin’s now-playing and qBittorrent’s download status directly through their APIs, so every service is visible at a glance.

2. DPanel (Docker Management)

Image: dpanel/dpanel:lite
Summary: A lightweight Docker management panel designed for Chinese users’ habits, more intuitive than Portainer.
How I use it: To view container logs, restart services, and monitor live traffic. Many of my apps (such as DDNS-Go, Nginx, Trilium) are orchestrated and managed through DPanel.

3. Nginx Proxy Manager & DDNS-Go

Image: jc21/nginx-proxy-manager / jeessy/ddns-go
Summary: A reverse-proxy wizard and a dynamic DNS tool.
How I use it: DDNS-Go handles the changing public IP at home, and NPM automatically requests SSL certificates for my domain. This lets me securely reach every service at home over https:// from outside.

🎬 Part 2: The Fully Automated Media Empire (Media Center)

This is the mini PC’s core purpose — building a “Netflix” replacement that needs no manual intervention.

4. Jellyfin (Media Server)

Image: jellyfin/jellyfin:latest
Summary: An open-source, free media system and the best alternative to Emby/Plex.
Experience: It is a memory hog (about 10%), but it is well worth it for the beautiful poster wall and smooth playback on every device.

5. MoviePilot-v2 (Smart Media Librarian)

Image: jxxghp/moviepilot-v2:latest
Summary: Although it is hailed as an all-powerful media automation wizard, I use it in a “reduced” way, enabling only the scraping and organizing features.
How I use it: I don’t want to fuss with complicated PT sites and indexer configurations. No matter where I download videos from (cloud-drive sync or manual downloads, for example), as long as I drop them into a folder, MoviePilot automatically identifies them, renames them to the standard format (S01E01), scrapes posters and descriptions, and neatly files them into the media library. It is like a tireless librarian turning messy files into a beautiful poster wall.

6. Prowlarr & qBittorrent

Image: linuxserver/prowlarr / jarylc/qbittorrent
Summary: Indexer management and a downloader.
How they work together: Prowlarr manages the indexes of the major sites in one place, while qBittorrent quietly downloads at full speed in the background.

7. ChineseSubFinder (A Veteran Subtitle Helper)

Image: (original project no longer maintained)
Summary: Even though this project is no longer updated, I still can’t bring myself to delete it, because its subtitle organizing logic remains irreplaceable.
How I use it: I now mainly use it for the “last mile” of the work. After I download a full-season subtitle pack from a subtitle site, I upload it directly through its web interface. It automatically identifies episode numbers, uniformly renames the files (aligning them with the video file names), and places them precisely into the matching media directory. As a batch subtitle formatting tool, it is still extremely efficient.

8. MoonTV-Core

Image: ghcr.io/moontechlab/lunatv
Summary: A tool for aggregating and managing IPTV live sources, giving the home TV access to a richer set of real-time channels.

⚡️ Part 3: Productivity and Office Toolkit (Productivity)

No uploading data to the cloud, no ads — these tools double your work efficiency.

9. Stirling-PDF (The All-in-One PDF King)

Image: docker.stirlingpdf.com/stirlingtools/stirling-pdf:latest
Summary: A powerful local PDF toolbox.
Why I recommend it: Highly recommended! It can merge, split, and rotate PDFs, and even supports OCR and format conversion. It runs entirely in the browser, so you never again have to search for ad-ridden “online PDF converter” sites.

10. Trilium Notes CN (Knowledge Base)

Image: nriver/trilium-cn
Summary: The Chinese-optimized version of Trilium. A hierarchical note-taking app focused on building large personal knowledge bases.
How I use it: I throw all kinds of code snippets and life notes into it; it supports mind-map-like relationship graphs, and the data is entirely in my own hands.

11. HIVision ID Photos (AI ID Photos)

Image: linzeyi/hivision_idphotos:v1.3.1
Summary: A lightweight AI ID-photo maker that has been very popular lately.
How to play with it: Upload a casual photo and it automatically cuts out the subject, changes the background color, and lays it out to produce a standard ID photo.

12. Browserless Chrome

Image: browserless/chrome:latest
Summary: A headless browser service.
What it does: It usually runs as a background service, giving my scraper apps or PDF generation tools the ability to render web pages.

🛡️ Part 4: Network Security and Ops (Security & Ops)

13. WireGuard Easy

Image: (configuration based on the official WireGuard)
Summary: The simplest, easiest-to-use VPN setup.
Scenario: When I’m out connecting to public Wi-Fi, or when I need to reach home intranet services that are not exposed to the public internet (such as a database), I connect back to the home WireGuard with one tap.

14. UpSnap

Image: ghcr.io/seriousm4x/upsnap
Summary: A simple Wake-on-LAN (WoL) and device status monitoring panel.
How to play with it: It can monitor the online status of every device at home and remotely wake a sleeping desktop with one tap.

15. Umami & Gotify

Image: umami-software/umami / gotify/server
Summary: Website analytics and message push notifications.
What they do: Umami tracks my blog traffic (privacy-friendly), while Gotify pushes alerts from all my services to my phone.

⚙️ Other Geek Toys

Besides the mainstays above, I also run a few fun little services:

Quark Auto Save (quark-auto-save): Automatically syncs transferred resources from Alibaba Cloud Drive/Quark Drive to local storage for use with the media library.
EasyNode (easynode): A lightweight server management and monitoring tool with a built-in web SSH terminal.
Nuxt-Blog-Site: My personal blog system.
OpenList: A minimalist file-listing program that makes it easy to share files with friends.

📝 Summary

This mini PC now runs 27 containers stably. Although that looks like a lot of services, thanks to Docker’s isolation the system is very stable.

If you also have an idle old computer or mini PC, why not try deploying these services too. The feeling of holding your own data really is great.

What must-have tools are on your Docker list? Share them in the comments!