20 active, permissively licensed repos split cleanly across a NAS write node and a Pi idle node
Asked (summary)
Find the best active open-source projects (committed in 2025/2026, MIT/Apache/BSD) across distributed-storage/eBPF/Raft internals; self-hosted tools for an India–US long-distance couple (Plex watch parties, async voice/private journals, trip canvases, photo sync); browser VS Code, camera-card ingest, receipt OCR, tablet-browser terminal multiplexing; and local AI/knowledge tools within 4 GB RAM on a Raspberry Pi 5. For each: name, GitHub URL, language, latest commit, approximate RAM, recommended node, and one setup-specific reason. Nodes: UGREEN NAS (Intel N100, 8 GB, NVMe + CMR) and Raspberry Pi 5 (16 GB, SMR cold archive), both Docker-only, joined over 2.5/1 GbE and Tailscale.
The shortlist covers 20 repositories in four areas; all 20 were checked against official GitHub Atom commit feeds as of 2026-09-11 and all 20 show a 2025 or 2026 latest default-branch commit. Exact commit recency is single-sourced from those official feeds; RAM figures are conservative small-homelab planning envelopes (quantized model included where stated), not upstream guarantees.
Coverage gap: no clearly qualifying Plex-specific watch-party server was found. Independent-web corroboration surfaced SyncLounge (MIT) and Syncplay (Apache-2.0), but neither showed a verified 2025/2026 commit or push date in that evidence, so no watch-party row is recommended and the displayed count stays at 20.
≤250 MB250 MB–1 GB1–2.5 GB2.5–4 GBBubble area = upper planning RAM · lanes = area · columns = recommended node · hover for details
15 of 20 repos had a latest commit within the four days before the 2026-09-11 check; the oldest still-qualifying commit is Dragonboat's Raft fix on 2025-07-23 — github.com
The NAS takes every heavyweight writer — TiKV, Docling and LibrePhotos each plan for up to 4 GB during compaction, OCR or indexing — while all 13 Pi services except llama.cpp stay under 500 MB — github.com
Both eBPF picks, Inspektor Gadget and bpftrace, run containerized but need privileged/capability grants and host-kernel interfaces — they are not ordinary rootless containers — github.com
Memos is a private async Markdown journal with file/audio attachment potential — not a purpose-built voice-memo app — corroborated by independent web metadata (MIT, Go) — awesome.ecosyste.ms
eBPF privilegesInspektor Gadget and bpftrace stay in Docker but require privileged mode or CAP_BPF/CAP_SYS_ADMIN plus host kernel headers/tracefs mounts.
SMR is for cold sequential writes onlyUse the Pi's SMR disk as archive tail: rclone stages sequentially; never point RocksDB, OCR scratch or photo indexes at it.
Index on NVMe firstRun LibrePhotos indexing and Docling OCR against NAS NVMe, then move originals to CMR/SMR; both drop far below their 4 GB peaks at idle.
Tailscale-only exposureMemos, Excalidraw, ttyd/Zellij and SilverBullet bind to the tailnet only — no public ports for journals, canvases or terminals.
All 20 repositories
Project
GitHub
Language
Last commit
Approx. RAM
Node
Why it fits this setup
Method: 20 open-source repositories shortlisted for a two-node Docker-only homelab (UGREEN NAS N100 8 GB; Raspberry Pi 5 16 GB). Latest default-branch commit dates are single-sourced from official GitHub Atom feeds retrieved 2026-09-11; descriptions and licenses from the official repositories, with independent web corroboration for couple-oriented tools. RAM is a conservative planning envelope (upper bound sizes the bubbles), including quantized model weights where stated; languages are repository primary/implementation languages. Non-qualifying watch-party candidates (unverified recency or GPL) were cut; commit titles and evidence snippets omitted for space.