Selfhosted

Write things down

You will break something - and that's good, it's the best way to learn - but you'll want to make a note of what you did / went wrong / how you fixed it.

Future you will still break things and be grateful that you wrote that thing down

You'll buy something and find next year it was the wrong thing (too small, too large, too old, too new), so just get second hand stuff until you know what you need.

Cabled networks are so much better than wireless, but then you'll need switches and cables and shelves and stuff... so using today's wifi is fine, but know where you're heading.

You need to store you stuff - that'll be in a NAS

You need something to run services on - that'll be your server

These might be the same physical metal lump (your 2nd laptop?), they might be separate... play around, break something and work out what feels right for you... and then put your data on there

... and that'll break too.

Just be aware... if sync files between devices. That's not a backup. (Consider you've deleted / corrupted something - it's now replicated everywhere)

Having a NAS with 10 drives in a RAID6 array, is not a backup. It's just really robust against a drive failure, but a deleted file is still a deleted file.

Take a full copy of your data off your system - then restore it somewhere else.

Did it work? If so, that's a backup.

Honestly? Don't do the whole switch, or even a big switch from a few services to another.

Start small. Very small. Try doing just one service you rely on, like your images or music. Immich just announced their first stable release. I use navidrome for my music. Make sure to test these on a copy of your data, not your actual data.

Once you've got one service working as you want it to do, then you can try your hand at another service. This way, you don't get stuck trying to do everything all at once.

It may be worth considering how much (if any) you want to spend at the start, too. That'll inform your next immediate task; setting up basic backups for your data. A spare drive is a good start, but it may be worth keeping another one at your parents house, or similar.

Instead of self hosting, why not try better offerings?

Most anything you probably use Google for, you can do with a disroot account. Riseup is a great group, with many similar services (not all). The tildeverse also has myriad replacement services.

Just try to support them, financially.

@MTZ saving this for later! I aim to go the same path soon :)

Use DietPi, it's a great OS

I wanna say thank you for making this post OP. I've got a spare laptop that I want to try to turn into my own cloud server but I find the endeavour similarly hard as well. I'll be looking at the tips in the comments. Good luck OP!

I will probably get flogged by this answer but here it goes:

I'd throw you right into the deep end: get a spare machine (an old laptop or PC) and install proxmox on it. Play around, breaks shit, delete the container/VM and start over.

Grab stuff from the Community Helper Scripts and see new stuff, try alternatives, see what works for you and don't be afraid of breaking stuff.

It takes a bit longer and some basic concepts might fly over your head, but the stuff you learn like this, you learn by heart.

It's been a few years since I started tinkering with a laptop with a busted video output circuit. Now I serve NextCloud and Immich to my family, keep receipts and documents neatly organised on Paperless, have a decent arr stack and a bunch of extra goodies. All from "a PC without video? Might as well make a server" now with a proper machine with several drives on ZFS pools, health checks and redundancy.

Its a helluva rabbit hole.

At first, you have to decide what do you need. You can selfhost almost everything, but in my opinion there is no need to do so.

Second thing is hardware to host it. I saw a few comments recommending NAS. It is of course good thing, but my suggestion is just building your own NAS. You need only decent computer to do it.

The easiest way is just installing TrueNAS on it - with that you can setup file sharing and your apps via docker.

But what apps would you need/want? I can recommend a few from my stack:

• vaultwarden - for storing passwords, 2FA codes
• immich - for storing photos, videos, autoupload from phone
• adguard - for getting rid of ads, tracking They are really easy to deploy.

As an alternative to file shares via SMB, nextcloud is really good option. It’s google drive on steroids. Also includes photo gallery with great app on android/ios with autoupload option.

I really wish people would realize the level of dependency, and thus leverage, these companies have encouraged us to give them, before they learn it first hand.

Start with a nas, the rest will naturally come when you try to access your data for outside, or organize your data, or save more data types to your nas.

Your nas should be the central device and you build the rest around it.

Now, The question is, which nas? I would recommend synology, they are not too performance, a bit expensive and the company is lately doing suspicious moves, but the sw and the hw are rock solid and they are quite good for beginners from almost all angles. Extra point for how many howtos and tutorials are present in internet.

Once you are comfortable with them, you will realize the rest

if it seems daunting, which it is!, maybe it would be a good piont to ask yourself if you really need to run a server and these self hosted web apps in the first place. i did for about 10 years but i realised at some point i didnt need half of it.

if youre planning on having multiple users or want to share one of the services (like real time editing of files or passwords etc) then thats where self hosted stuff makes sense to me, but if not then syncthing can do a lot without needing any complicated setup

keepass is a good example. or note taking apps like jopin or obsidian where the data is store in plain text and where you can choose where the data is stored works great with syncthing

for about a year before i did any self hosted stuff i was running only syncthing on my laptop and phone without any server so its do-able and you can get started right now and worry about getting a server later.

tailscale is a huge help as well and is very easy to setup. say you repurpose an old laptop as a server for now and install whatever services on it, jellyfin for example, you will only be able to access that when you are on your home network but not when you are away, and thats where tailscale comes in. as long as its installed on each device you should be able to connect to your apps/services from anywhere.

basically you can start small and then over the coming months and years as you learn more you will get more confident about moving onto more complicated setups

I had something similar happen with Google a few years ago. Even though I had my password and access to my email they decided I was trying to hack my own account and locked me out. Like you I immediately started to look for other solutions.

Syncthing file sharing is really easy to install and use. There are no ports to configure on your router and everything is encrypted in transit. I have my phone's DCIM directory set up to sync to my home server and PC so new photos are backed up and available everywhere in a few seconds. I installed Syncthing intending to move to another solution eventually, but it works so well (aside from one or two files that occasionally don't sync) that I've just stuck with it.

For passwords Keepass & KeepassXC work really well on just about every platform. I share the password file using Syncthing and in years of doing this I've never had a problem that I didn't cause myself and those were minor.

You can get both of these up and running with very little effort and quickly limit your reliance on Google, then move to other solutions if you find they'd work better for you.

I'm fairly technical but I honestly don't know where to begin either. Also trying to improve our personal security to an extent.

Hope you get some answers

Damn, that's scary indeed! First of all, congratulations on your resolve to take control of your data. You have a long journey ahead of you, but don't be discouraged, take one step at a time and don't be afraid to ask for help.

As for where to start, I think you've already figured it out yourself: invest some time in learning the basics of networking. You don't need to become an enterprise-level networking wizard, just learn the basics: learn what an IP address is, what a network mask is (sometimes also referred to as "prefix length"), what DNS is and does, how to change these settings on your home network and why you'd want to change them. Try stuff, break it, fix it, repeat. Also, if you're not familiar with or already using it, it might be a good opportunity to pick up Linux. If you're coming from Windows, a beginner friendly distribution like Linux Mint will do nicely. Try installing it on an old computer to see what it's like, poke at it until you're comfortable, then maybe make it your main operating system. Knowing Linux basics (command-line shenanigans in particular) will give you a big edge when you decide to start hosting your own services.

Backup. I use Backblaze personal which is $179 for two years of 'unlimited' storage. All my important self hosted data is duped to some old 2.5" external drives connected to my work machine that then is backing up to Backblaze. I also have 1yr retention, so any deleted file is accessible for up to 1yr.

After backups are sorted, stick with the OS you know best. If Windows (I hope not), then HyperV for VMs is good. Try the official Nextcloud VM from Hanson IT. Nextcloud is a good catch-all, but it's beaten by other specific tools. I now host all I need from specific Docker containers: photos, calendar, email backup etc etc

But I would say Docker. Docker desktop if Macos or Windows if your thing. Get to know docker and the world of self hosting is your oyster.

As what others say, keep it all to your home network and tread carefully when trying to remote access it all.

I'm about 90% decoupled from Google, it's been a journey.

I'm at the difficult stage of contemplating how to decom my gmail email, and the Google account itself.

I'll throw my hat in the ring and offer any help if you need it. Similar to others here, I suggest you start with something discrete like photos.

Hi @MTZ , #selfhosting could be a move in the right direction for you. I started managing my own servers over 10 years ago, locally, from my home, later VPS and finally again from my home. Eventually I moved toward @yunohost - it simplifies a lot of things! I documented some my experiences at https://wasi.ovh/
Start small: setup file/photo sync (@nextcloud), calendars and contacts and gradually start adding data from old backups once you feel comfortable.
Have fun and good luck :)

Unless you have experience with ethernet equipment and such it is probably better to start with some hosted service of an open-source app like Nextcloud or Immich or (slightly more advanced) a VPS somewhere. Doing it immediately from home with your own server has a steep learning curve.