Do you have any advice or suggestions about it?
- Hardware (what should be enough for a local PC, or VPS…)
- Software (OS [Debian, Yunohost, other…], “containerization” (Docker, virtual machines?), dashboard, management, backups, VPN tunneling…)
- “Utilities” to host (Lemmy, Peertube, Matrix, Mastodon, Actual Budget, Jellyfin, Forgejo, Invidious/Piped, local Pi-Hole, email, dedicated videogame servers like for Minecraft, SearXNG, personal file storage like Drive, AI [in the future, when I can afford a rig that can run a local model decently]…)
I’m aware it’s a lot of stuff to take on, so, do you have any advice on where to start? (how to find a cheap PC to experiment with, if not get a VPS, what to test on it, what “utilities” to try self-hosting first…)
Hardware: what you currently have on hand to play around with.
Software: start with something simple and well documented. Not quite the driver for the learning phase, in my personal opinion.
“Utilities” as you call them: What is useful to you? What do you want to play with or need to improve your personal use case?
I don’t mean to be flippant with my answers here. Do a little introspection and determine what is genuinely useful for you to self host. I personally run Technitium, Jellyfin, a portion of the "-arr"s, Immich, and Navidrome. My family uses all of these services/utilities on a daily basis, so they are useful for me to host. I have some of the services that need CPU and GPU processing power running on my gaming PC and others running on a Lenovo ThinkCenter that I got for free from the IT department at work. They have bins of PCs slated for recycling that work perfectly fine but are “outdated”.