I’m an English teacher who wanted to “cut the cord” wherever I could, so I started learning about domain hosts, containerization, .yaml files, etc.
Since then, I’ve been hosting several pods for file sharing and streaming for many years, and I’m currently thinking about learning kubernetes for home deployment. But why?
If you aren’t in development, IT, cyber security, or in a related profession, what made you want to learn this on your own? What made you want to pick this up as a hobby?
I fucking hate tech companies
Surgeon.
Seeing tech ceo’s at the trump inauguration got me sick in the stomach. I unsubscribed from everything out of spite and nausea and learned to selfhost over the course of what is almost a year now. At first it took up all my spare time and made my wife crazy. Now it’s been several weeks since i last had to sudo anything.
It also opened my eyes to how stupid everything IT related in my country is. My municipality for example bought for what has now become a billion fucking euros a digital health record system from Epic. It’s the shittiest piece of software ive ever used, fully closed source and there’s ongoing customization costs trying to get it to work. We’re also a 100% onboard with office360 (copilot and all).
Former healthcare IT, holy crap do all digital health records systems seem to suck. Some of them suck in different ways, but none of the big ones anyway are great.
I get that there’s a lot of semi-special use cases and regulatory requirements and so on, but at the end of the day it’s text and images and a record of the changes to them. And it’s not like this is a surprise problem. People have been trying to digitize stuff since at least the 90s. And yet every single system seems like it’s only been in development for a few months and usually has trouble working with itself, much less any other record system.
sad OSCAR noises
Engineer here, but my technical expertise is about as far away from computing and technology as you can get and still be an engineer.
I was a kid in the 90s and the first album I bought was Metallica’s black album. I spent over $18 in like 1999 so with inflation that’s like $300 or something now. Then the drummer of what was then my favorite band says hey, if you’re downloading our music on Napster, then we don’t want you as a fan. That hit teenage me pretty hard and basically radicalized me to find “alternative methods” for every piece of digital media I could, if that’s how the people I looked up to were going to treat me for not having as much money as them. Everything I host now started at that inflection point, from picking up Linux as a hobby to learning about networking and security. Turned out to be a pretty good path to follow though seeing how Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify et. al. turned out in the end.
I still download and share all of Metallica’s discography out of spite, but haven’t listened to them since.
I love your origin story so much
Engineer here
What division? Curious. I’m a mech eng specializing in HVAC. I didn’t get to attain my own PE stamp…life happened.
I do civil engineering work, mostly related to soils etc. I have a computer for work but that’s about as far as it gets for me professionally.
Awesome!
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Getting sick of google having a degree of control over my data and the increasing AI being jammed down everyones throats. Combined with the keylogging keyboards and OS’s which are becoming more and more invasive by the month. Time for some liberation. I also enjoy learning coding, docker, networking etc. Cost is another factor. Although I could lie and say a 1 time fee for a server will be cheaper than Google One. Yeh it was at the start on paper but realistically after you upgrade drives and ram and buy backup drive etc it does start to add up.
It can feel like a lot of money up front, but it really is just up front. If you consider the subscription services and compare that to the life of your hardware, you’re in good shape. With the amount of media we consume, my family has paid it off months ago.
Yes you’re right. When i did the math at the start i calculated it would pay for itself in a few years. However it’s kind of like a car. You get a car and you always want to add new rims, new turbo, new subwoofer etc. I added more ram which was needed anyway. Upgraded the SSD. Want to replace the old SATA. Bought a new HDD to backup too. Then it started to add up. My server is really small and basic too. Just a pre 2020 lenovo thinkcentre. Of course everyone is different too. If I were just hosting my data and not using it as a media downloader and player as well then I wouldn’t have really needed any of that extra stuff. Also you have to consider that liberating your data is a huge benefit even if financially it the numbers don’t look as good as you want. You can’t put a price on that.
I’m a marketer by profession, but I just moved to a new country to be with my husband and am still job hunting.
Growing up, my dad was a programmer. I was a kid in the 2000s, and I wasn’t allowed to spend money online because everywhere just looked sketchy as heck then (and we also didn’t have the disposable income). Over the years I’ve watched my dad build up his own movie downloading and streaming solution, home automation, etc, but never had the opportunity to really try my hand at this stuff till I moved out and suddenly had free unemployment time and a very supportive husband.
I’m still new to it all, but I’ve managed to get docker working, Komodo to manage containers, firefly III for finances, Pelican to run game servers (that none of my friends have really played with me on 😅) and created a basic homepage to link to everything.
I’m considering doing Jellyfin, but I’m not a huge movie/shows consumer, so haven’t really started on that. It was nice being able to ask my dad for help when I was figuring all the basics out though. We never had that much in common to talk about, and this made me feel a bit closer to him, even if I live across the globe now.
I’m considering doing Jellyfin, but I’m not a huge movie/shows consumer,
Well, if you’re paying for [Insert Streaming Service Here] than I’d say it’s worth it. Save yourself the extra 10, 15, 20 dollars a month and use it on a company (or open sourced project!) that actually cares about its consumers, this can be said for Music streaming and “cloud” storage as well.
Oh definitely. Had a friend say I saved him like 100 USD in streaming all 6 seasons or something of a well known show because each season had to be rented separately and weren’t currently on any services. Was nuts when I heard the total.
I’m holding on till I’ve got finances rolling again, but a NAS is definitely in my plans!
I’m an entrepreneur, jack of all trades good at none. My relationship with technology started at a very young age thumbing through the pages of Pop Sci & Pop Mechanics magazines. As a kid, I would drag my wagon to electronic repair shops (back when people actually had their electronics fixed) and ask if there was any ‘junk’ they wanted to get rid of. I’d load up my wagon and back to the house I’d go to explore all my treasures. Some of it I actually could fix and I was the only kid I knew with stereos, turntables, small b&w TVs, radios, 8-track & cassette players. The excess, I would sell to friends.
I built my first 5 watt HAM radio set from a kit from the N.R.I which promised me that if I completed the course, I would be guaranteed of a successful career in electronics. LOL Later on, a friend of mine at the time and I built our own low power FM transmitter and would put on shows after school for the kids in the neighborhood. We would take call ins for requests…until that drove my parents(?) mad because of the constant phone ringing.
My first computer was an Altair, then a Timex/Sinclair, and I’ve had just about one of each since then.
Fast forward to the age of the internet, and my first real ‘self hosting’ gig was running a fully licensed, internet radio station in the pre-napster era. Well, Napster came out I think in 1999-ish and that’s about the time I fired up the internet radio station. It was selfhosted and streamed to Shoutcast CDN servers paid for by an outfit I worked with called the IM Radio Networks. Everything was automated. We could take requests from a webpage of popular choices, that got funneled to the server, and in a couple songs, you got to hear your request. We featured Indie bands we solicited from MP3.com, but also carried commercial bands too. And then the RIAA took a giant shit on internet radio. A large group of us went to Washington to plead our case before a committee headed up by Senator Leahy.
From there, I’ve been selfhosting something or another but it didn’t start to really gel into something really serious until Docker came around. That changed the game. That takes up to present day 2026. Still selfhosting, still intrigued by technology, still that wide eyed kid trying to learn all he can stuff into his limited brain.
I wanted more Dropbox space. Self hosted Nextcloud when Docker became a thing.
Ended up getting a job in tech as I got better with containerization and better at programming from scripting and reading Data Structures books
Getting out of the grasp of big tech.
Been self hosting for over 10 years before anyone coined the term enshittification. When i started, i could never imagine things getting THIS BAD with tech companies. I am happier and happier with my decision to self host things every day
I work in advertising
“I work in advertising” is an amazing signoff for this post. It works on so many levels, and I remain genuinely unsure which you intended. The bitter sarcasm of a veteran who saw this coming by virtue of having caused it? The smooth flex of a consummate professional? A stunning lack of self-awareness combined with simple earnest participation in the thread? In any case, thank you for making me stop and think :)
The bitter sarcasm of a veteran who saw this coming by virtue of having caused it?
a bit of this. Although in my defense, I wasnt working in advertising at the time (my company didnt even have an advertising division)
also, i dont work for one of the big tech companies that have their claws in your digital life. But i can see how it contributes at some level, however minor.
Same here, got locked out of my main gmail/google account and there was no real person to help me recover 10+ years of my stuff. Never again.
The question is not why to start, but when do you stop, lol
I’m working in pharmaceutical production industry and I have started selfhosting few months ago.
I wanted to replace google photos with immich, cause my photo collection approached 200gb and I didn’t want to upgrade to 2tb version. My gf also had same problem
Bought second hand mini pc for 100€ to test to see how it goes and if I had decided to go back, i would have sold it.
Initially I was following FUTO guide, but quickly noticed it was too extensive and complex for my setup. I managed to set up immich with reverse proxy, did few mistakes here and there, but when it finally worked, I got hooked. I now have:
- local backups to external drive (borg-web-ui docker)
- ntfy. To send noticiation to my phone after backup had finished
- diun. To notify when docker update is available
- dockgee. docker management
- tailscale. Remote access
All of it comes gradually, I’m tinkering with home assistant vm now.
Immich is fantastic. I’d been using Nextcloud for photos, but, like many monolithic software suites, it lacks many features. I’d also been using Spotify for notifications, but I’ve abandoned it and ran to Matrix. I’ll have to try ntfy.
HomeAssistant can be great, though it does require some yaml-fu for notifications and such. At one point I had it use TTS for notifications.
Out of all services I run, my wife has as registered user on 3 of them, which are Immich, Nextcloud and Jellyfin. She basically uses only Immich cause it fucking rocks and she loves it!
I’m a disabled stay at home parent and this is something I can do at times of my own choosing. I’ve always been a bit interested. Taught myself HTML instead of going WYSIWYG back in the day type of person. I like Foss.
And it distracts me from play.m3o.xyz
Former English teacher here. My self-hosting origin is that I had 20 years or so of teaching materials I’d collected in OneNote over that time and simply wanted to have offline copies so that I could feel that if ever something went wrong with Microsoft like getting permanently locked out of my account, then I had a means of restoring everything. Microsoft makes it practically impossible to export to a working backup.
After spending a LONG time trying everything to get back ownership of my materials, I understood the need to move my digital stuff away from big tech. I bought a Synology NAS, learned how to use Docker and then took more steps. About the same time I started using Fediverse apps and learned a great deal from the discussions and links there. My greatest “learn” has been keeping notes in plaintext files (and not getting seduced by nice shiny new apps that are actually horrors that want lure you into a future subscription).
I use Obsidian as a OneNote replacement because it’s built around markdown, which is just a a text file that includes structure and formatting.
I don’t use their subscription syncing service, just sync files to my own phone and server. Obsidian is great for organizing, but I can still read all the files as text.
…get back ownership of my materials…
Yes, that was a red flag for me. Ever have your materials “removed?” I once lost a few Kindle books because Amazon pulled them off the shelves. After that, I learned how to strip DRM off the books and save them offline.
Ditto about the notes. Are you using any specific apps to edit them? I’m just using nvim with markdown plugins.
That’s one of the other big issues. I have the same worries about how digital-only gaming has become. My kids seem to prefer digital downloads and really don’t believe me when I warn them that they have absolutely no control over what they “buy”. But they look at me like one of those crazy old-timers who just doesn’t understand the modern world.
I started with Logseq and then quickly moved to Obsidian (which I think is great). Over the last couple of months I’ve started using Emacs with Org (partly for the challenge and partly because it seems to be able to do pretty much everything).
The diversity represented here is interesting to me. Surgeon, teachers, musicians, mechanics, etc. Fascinating.
I’m a bum!
A 21st century bum with a bindle full of salvaged ram?
Now Playing: Bad Religion - 21st Century Digital Bum
I currently grow weed, train dogs, and build custom computers. The last one has become all but impossible though. Dunno what you’d call me.
I currently grow weed
Cannabis will grow just about anywhere. However, to make it do magic, it takes skill.
It’s just fancy/finicky tomatoes, when you get down to it. Lol. The “skill” is owning a moisture and pH meter, and reading the soil/ hydroponic pH a couple times a day. I’ve all but automated the process at this point, at least from clone to bud stages. Getting clones to root, and trimming the buds is basically all I have to monitor any more, but that did take like 3 years of tweaking to setup.
Oh, and I grow indoors. My grow rooms could easily be used as electronics clean rooms without much modification. I set them up that way to keep out insects. Specifically spider mites. Needless to say, I can also control the temperature, humidity, and lighting of those rooms.
I grow a few tomatoes myself. Not quite the operation you have going tho. After doing a significant amount of research, I have found that is does great for my seizure condition. One of the terpines of cannabis is Linalool, and it is an effective anti-seizure med. So, I grow strains that are high in Linalool. After a seizure, it makes for a better rescue med than Ativan. In all honesty, tho I think cannabis gets over hyped a lot, it has made a demonstrable positive difference in my life. It isn’t a panacea drug, but is definitely has many medical use cases. It’s a shame here in the US that rich, white, racist, capitalist’s legislation from 100 years ago, still bogs down it’s legalization.
Another teacher here, I picked up an interest in computing in general from my dad when I was young (got my start on an old C64). As I grew up we both discovered Linux and it’s been a slow burn ever since. My first self-hosted service was Emby and a simple file server, followed by a personal Moodle instance. I eventually moved to Proxmox for hosting my services and have steadily expanded my list as I become ever more dismayed by cloud hosted services and subscriptions.
I lack formal education in the tech field, but I honestly wish I didn’t waste my 20’s on drugs (it was fun though, honestly) and an attempt at a rap career, instead of getting my hands dirty in the field, so to speak. I got into computers in the early 2000’s, discovered linux in 2006, and since then I’ve been that friend who’s into computers and stuff.
I kind of forget what exactly got me into self-hosting . . . but youtube probably had something to do with it, with many youtubers like Raid Owl, Level1Techs, and even LTT talking about things like Jellyfin and TrueNAS, it got me curious as to why I never got into it sooner.
My god man, post the raps! Is there a linux DAW you recommend? I haven’t found one
https://youtube.com/watch?v=YPZiIgjR5M0
alternatively I’ve got a totally legit copy of Ableton, let’s throw down on the self-hosting equivalent to cocaine distribution tutorials such as this one from Master P
I’ve always been quite techie (maybe not by trade, but by passion), and been decoupling from big tech solutions ever since the Snowden revelations dropped. Ditched a lot of non-free software and services first (MS Office -> LibreOffice being one of the biggest), then switched to Desktop Linux and degoogled Android. I suppose self-hosting my own services and taking control of my network was the next logical step on this journey. That, and immich. It’s so ridiculously good, it single-handedly made me want to run my first real server.
