Self-hosting = fun + independence (Part I)

These past few years I have left a lot of big tech platforms and other services due to the rise enshitifcations on these platforms, rise of ads and subscriptions, concern about security and privacy and being very concerned that I don't really own most of my personal data.

As many millions of others do, I was a long life Google Suite user (Drive, Docs, Keeps, Photos) and stored most of my passwords in... I kid you not... Google Chrome (the built-in password manager). Which is very insecure.

There were also many events in the tech world that urged my conscience to start with self-hosting. Some might dismiss this as paranoia, but it’s undeniable that our privacy and our right to own the thing we buy are at greater risk than ever before.

As an wise man said...

"There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer"

I have been deep into the homelab rabbit hole and community and I can say with confidence that anyone many people should self-host. Rich or poor with at least one spear computer, electricity, an internet connection (LAN) and some time to spend can self host many cool services. This article is a gentle introduction of what you can start with and also an overview of my homelab services (for inspiration).

Be realistic ! (regarding privacy)

Not everyone CAN self-host but it thinks it should be encouraged. My intention with this post isn't to create fear mongering but to educate mostly about the cool things you can host (and show off). For me, I'm willing to completely sacrifice my convenience with these platforms for privacy but others can’t or cannot do it fully. And that's okay! Step-by-step !

Pros and Cons

Pros

• It's "mostly" free (excluding, of course, the computer or NAS, electricity, your internet connection and additional hard drive if needed)
• You own your all data and you control every single bit of it.
• It's actually fun (no kidding)
• You can actually learn a lot of very important concepts in networking, cybersecurity, IT and many other adjacent field.
• Most OS and Self-hosted apps you will found are open source and pretty comparable in term of feature to other Big Tech services (like Google Drive --> Nextcloud // Netflix, Spotify --> Jellyfin)

Probable Cons

• It can be time consuming sometime, especially if you are in a beginner in tech in general or maybe have no experience with Linux
• You have to fix things yourself if things don’t work as expected
• The only subscription you will need is for your domain provider (I am very happy with Cloudflare, ~10$/year for each individual domains)
• If you have more important things to do. Like being the president of the United States, maybe don’t do it right now...

Where to start?

Start small. An old desktop or portable computer can do the job but you MUST definitely install Linux on it (Ubuntu Server, Debian, OpenMediaVault) to make it great again!. For exemple, I started my homelab journey with an old Intel Pentium PC (4GB DDR3) that was laying around and was able to self-host services like Vaultwarden (a fork of Bitwarden), the best private and secure password manager right now it sync great with all my devices. Mediawiki (An self-hosted wikipedia) and PiVPN (For filtring bad websites like NSFW, Ads and Scams) with no issues.

Docker + OpenMediaVault makes self hosting very easy. But I'm still exploring Proxmox too (Virtual Machines for servers). I will expend on those in Part II

And there a lot of other tutorials on the internet. If you want to start for "free", I highly recommend this one by Karlos Likes Computers

What do I have on my homelab?

Here a taste of what I currently have on some servers :

• Searxng : Your own personal search engine (might be slow from time to time)
• Jellyfin : Enables you to collect, manage, and stream your media. I mostly use it as my Spotify and Netflix replacement. It's quite great! It can be an great alternative to most streaming platforms
• Jellyseerr, Radarr, Sonarr, Bazarr : Manage all your movies and TV Shows for you automatically, works with Jellyfin
• qBittorent : hummm... For downloading Linux ISOs I guess ?
• Deemix : A Music Management, can work with Jellyfin (development not active)
• Portainer : Manage all your Docker containers (might replace it soon for something else)
• Tailscale : Personal home VPN
• Nextcloud : Full Google Suite alternative for my personal and business files (Google Drive, Docs, Notes etc...)
• Bitwarden/Vaultwarden : The best password manager ever !
• FreshRSS : Reject "social" media, embrace RSS
• Gotify : Push Notification
• My Minecraft Server : Self-explanatory
• Pi-Hole : Say no to ads and malicious stuff on your network !
• Uptime Kuma : Monitor all of my selfhosted apps, if something goes wrong, it notifies me via Gotify
• Syncthing : An file sync service, used mostly to sync my Obsidian notes across devices quickly
• OpenSpeedTest

Conclusion

Self-hosting is cool and you should try it, for fun or for your privacy (or both!).