can you get something besides a pi?

i was trying to find a link to Apache’s chat server that we used to power cruise ship chat applications w/out internet. i didn’t find it but this list i found has some neat projects listed, so i thought i would share that at least: https://medevel.com/26-os-chat-servers/ (no affiliation)

easiest would be to install it on a ras pi: https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd-project/resourcesold/installing-freebsd-for-raspberry-pi/

another easy way to get started is to install it in a VM. once you have the process down, you could try installing it to a secondary disk or partition on hardware.

take stuff apart and put it back together. install obscure operating systems. build a network and servers for just yourself. put multiple operating systems on the same computer. repair a broken laptop or phone. just fun things like that

yep, my most heavily-trafficked site is https://bongo.to which Cloudflare doesn’t support for registration. so i have the domain registered with Namecheap but hosted still via Cloudflare. Nowadays I’d check out Porkbun also, I’ve heard good things.

Cloudflare is by far the cheapest registrar & host I’ve used. I’m on their free plan, which can handle almost any load (thousands of requests a week for me personally). The domains are sold at cost, so around $10 for my dot-coms. So $10/yr covers it.