I assume most users here have some sort of tech/IT/software background. However, I’ve seen some comments of people who might not have that background (no problem with that) and I wonder if you are self-hosting anything, how did you decide that you would like to self-host?
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I’m a farmer that was an IT guy a decade or so ago, which I guess is a background in it, but that’s not why I do it. Self-hosting is a self-reliance thing. I like to fix my own equipment, metal and silicon.
When it comes apart, I want to know the reason, and I like to invent new ways to do things, which means I have to be able to control my infrastructure.
Honestly it would be really cool to see more self hosting in the farming space. I want to see a iot system that it run by the farmer.
Before we know it there will be a server room at each farm
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Are you me?
I love unRAID so much. It’s crazy how just a simple GUI can help solidify docker concepts.
Medical device engineer here (mechanical engineering). I host jellyfin, game servers (Minecraft, factorio, valheim, etc), my website, and a bunch of other minor services I find useful.
I got into it originally through a combination of poor internet, and being fed up with Google and others discontinuing products/features. The internet problem is solved now, so my only goal is not being reliant on someone else’s cloud.
When they were installing the alarm at my house I noticed that the main guy had nextcloud on his phone and it sparked a nice conversation about privacy. He has no technical background but managed to self-host it on his old laptop with one of those distros that have an easy UI for self-hosting (don’t remember which one exactly). He’s a pretty cool guy.
Proxmox or Unraid?
I don’t work in IT/Tech at all, but I’ve been an enthusiast since I was young, at first piggybacking off of my dad, then developing my own interests as I got into high school and college. I started self-hosting because I found it interesting and as time progressed I saw the benefits of operating things locally. I only host things within my own network though, because I’m not yet comfortable with how to safely set up external access.
Self hosting is your pathway to a tech background.
University for comp sci, in my experience around the space, is a complete waste of time. Just a piece of paper that may or may not equip the recipient with some skills that may or may not be relevant.
University is ok if you’re starting at zero and don’t even know what’s out there. It’s for exposing students to a a breadth of topics and some rationale of why things are as they are, but not necessarily for plugging them into a production environment.
Nothing beats having your own real world project, either for motivation or exposure to cutting edge methods. Universities have tried to replicate that with things like ‘problem based learning,’ and they probably hope that students will be inspired by one or two of the classes to start their own out-of-class project, but school and work are fundamentally different ways of learning with fundamentally different goals.
Psychologist by training, production planner by trade. I started using Linux around 15 years ago on my laptop. My self hosted journey started with a Chromecast plugged in a TV and I would cast file from my laptop. Fed up on how laggy and buggy the set up was I installed Kodi on my laptop. Then, I bought a SBC and a few years later a refurbished NUC for few bucks.
I now selfhost around 10 services but nothing too complex (jellyfin, grocy, paperless, etc). I know how to set up a docker image and thinker a bit with config files but I rely heavily on guides for tasks more complex than that. There are a few services that I would like to setup but as I get older I get less joy from setting up a system than using it and the hours I can invest on this are unfortunately limited.
No background but I can read and listen. There are plenty of resources around.
I started out of privacy concerns and I wanted to deGoogle It started this year with a RPI and pihole. Then I saw Mealie, bought a domain, and started sharing recipes with my family.
At first I messed around with Casa OS. It’s like a gateway drug. So easy to use and get stuff running.
Last week a 2nd hand i5 arrived and now I moved everything to proxmox. The RPI is still running pihole. At the moment I’m setting up Immich and I’m thinking about buying a NAS.
Since it is a new hobby I keep everything low cost. If it sticks I’ll invest in a proper home server.
De-Googling was what got me started as well. Wanted to be able to have my own Google Drive clone with Nextcloud. From there it was just one little improvement / additional service at a time as I learned to use Linux and docker. Now I run a Linux laptop and am considering an android phone.
Engineering background for reference.
I don’t work in IT at all. My self hosting journey started when I got sick of feeling powerless in the face of big tech companies who are increasingly ripping off customers or violating their right to privacy. There’s also the general mistrust that comes from my data being repeatedly breached or leaked because share holder profits are more important than investing in basic security.
Warehouse worker who self hosts stuff here.
It all started when I was a teenager and I lost access to my photobucket account…
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers Plex Brand of media server package RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer VPN Virtual Private Network
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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As someone with a strong tech background, that’s just impressive to me. It’s cool to see non-technical people are interested in self-hosting too, and for good reason.
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Still impressive imo, I have friends who work in IT who don’t even self-host lol
I don’t blame a lot of IT professionals for not wanting to self host. Especially if they are maintaining services for a living. When you do that same thing you do at work at home it gets very annoying quickly.
I believe that most self holsters actually are more hobbyist lifestyle than people with actual tech background.
I read and research a whole lot, which has taken me down this rabbit hole.
I have no formal IT education. But I grew up on computers when command line was how you got things done.
I clean construction site toilets. I wanted to run my own game and media severs and ended up with a Dell Poweredge, a synology 1u NAS and some ubiquity gear
