In this post I share some my personal journey with some selfhostesd open source apps and how they helped me. Maybey you will find some stuff in there that helps you as well.
Could someone point me to total beginner (like only used windows) self hosting primer? Don’t even know what kind of machine I would need.
My journey:
Had some form of Linux for a long time. Either in a VM (Oracle Virtual Box, then switched to S HyperV for compatibility reasons as I had Windows Pro anyways) or sometimes as dual boot.
Then came WSL which eased some things and complicated others. What this makes really easy is to start and play around with docker containers on your PC.
Then I experimented with Linux in a VM and put docker and other software there to practice.
Up until here, there were no costs involved (besides having Windows Pro, but depending on where you get your windows key, there’s not a real difference between pro and home anyways…).
After that I got my own VPS. As much as I don’t like AWS, Google Cloud (GCP), Azure and such, they usually offer a very small VPS for free and these can be a good point to start. If you want to really go and host things, it can be beneficial to look for a hoster that isn’t one of the big 3 cloud providers and pay for a VPS there.
For hosting at home: You could start with a raspberry pi, but looking at current prices, you usually get more flexibility and bang for the buck by buying a refurbished mini PC or repurposing an old notebook/PC. You can just put Yunohost or Proxmox on it and get going.
Anything that runs windows can probably run Linux and work well enough for self-hosting. But you’re getting ahead of yourself with worrying about hardware.
Easiest way to start is to find something that you want to try selfhosting that is relatively simple and use WSL within windows to familiarize yourself with Linux/networking/docker.
Once you’re far enough along to know what your needs are, then you can start thinking about the hardware to meet those needs.
You can start by experimenting on your current computer. Install docker, get some service that sounds interesting, and just access it on localhost. You’ll miss out on anything the service does overnight or downtime, and you won’t be able to access it from off-site, but it’s a fine way to wet your toes and see how it goes.
Docker: https://docs.docker.com/desktop/setup/install/windows-install/
Photo library: https://docs.immich.app/install/docker-compose/
Some maintainers even provide handy windows installers
Media library: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/windows
loose /= lose
Sorry this one had bothered me for years now and it just seems to get worse over time.
“I let the dogs loose from their enclosure.”
“Of course I would lose my phone when I don’t have Google’s Find My Phone anymore.”
/grammar nazi
loose
I get hung up on words too. However, my interests lie in the etymology thereof. Both words stem from the old Norse languages.
Nice article, and a fresh practical take on FOSS.
FMD is great, I use it frequently.
It does look great! Looks like the perfect FOSS alternative for Cerberus Anti-Theft.
But is Cloudflare required to use FMD?
So I just use it by authorizing my wife a and kids to use fmd commands, which means I just tell my wife to send me a text with “fmd ring” and it will start ringing until I find and stop it.
Also, it will message my wife and kids if the phone gets below 5%
There for this. I too am heavily de-googleing, and will be looking into fmt more 👍
FairScan, very cool, I was looking for something like that. I already use Paperless.
First thing that popped into my mind:
🎵Let me take you down, 'cause I’m going to…Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about. Strawberry Fields forever🎵
Nice blog. Good read. Well written and entertaining. Bookmarked. Thank you for sharing.
The best thing about paperless-ngx in my onion is the high degree of automation.
While I do agree that the automation is what makes it best over others, an onion I have seen expressed online is how there is no encryption of the documents in server. I guess you can only use paperless-ngx to hold a bunch of documents on a small air-gapped device, much like storing hundreds or more papers in a box somewhere. Though in my personal onion, the files should be encrypted on the server if it’s ever meant at all to be hosted on one.
Great read!
Thanks man ;)
Cool, also like the style of the blog, however the “Loading…” animation is kind a strange. It lasts almost 2sec , while the page data is completely loaded after 500ms or so.
Nice. Bookmarked in my FreshRSS installation
Thank you for the write ups, I especially enjoyed your “onions” on the software reviewed!
They should definitely make that a thing. Strawberries and onions?
