Because most self hosted things are free already. It doesn’t apply to FOSS.

Buying a used desktop is very nice for these things. You can set up a steam gaming thing.

Maybe be more specific?

For traveling I would suggest a laptop to behave as a server but the IP address changes a lot when traveling.

I’d personally opt for something hosted at home if possible like Nextcloud and Jellyfin with static IP and port forwarding to access on the go.

Tbh though, if you just want storage on the go buying a portable 1-4TB drive that connects via USB-C is enough.

I started using docker myself for stuff at home and I really liked it. You can create a setup that’s easy to reproduce or just download.

Easy to manage via docker CLI, one liner to run on startup unless stopped, tons of stuff made for docker becomes available. For non docker things you can always login to the container.

Tasks such as running, updating, stopping, listing active servers, finding out what ports are being used and automation are all easy imo.

You probably have something else you use for some/all of these tasks but docker makes all this available to non-sysadmin people and even has GUI for people who like clicking their mouse.

I think next time you find something that provides a docker compose file you should try it. :)

Yeah, not arguing that, it doesn’t cost them extra to allow those. Still, you can use 8080, 8989, 5000, 7878 etc, for plex, Jellyfin, nextcloud and so on.

You can even workaround it by using cloudflare functions that forward requests to your specific port, DNS it to cloudflare and run a commercial webapp out of your garage anyway.*

*Except if you want to honor whatever ToS they had you agree to.

That’s pretty nice compromise. 80 and 443 are the ones mainly used commercially

I don’t know Canada laws but does it only apply if you make money off it (or intend to). Self hosting Jellyfin server is basically just delayed uploading.