I was scared off a couple years ago when I attempted to host it myself. I took a break from selfhosting, but now I’m back, and from what I learned in the past, I know now not to torture myself swimming upstream when there are far easier downstream currents to follow.

I’m looking at conduit but I’m currently writing up a doc to plan out the process, and understand it before I actually deploy anything. I don’t want to open ports, don’t need federation and don’t need encryption, since I’ll be using tailscale to host a private server to only members of my tailnet.

I’ll report back, either here or in the main community, because I don’t want to expose ports, rent a VPS or use ansible for a simple private server for less than 10 people.

I lack formal education in the tech field, but I honestly wish I didn’t waste my 20’s on drugs (it was fun though, honestly) and an attempt at a rap career, instead of getting my hands dirty in the field, so to speak. I got into computers in the early 2000’s, discovered linux in 2006, and since then I’ve been that friend who’s into computers and stuff.

I kind of forget what exactly got me into self-hosting . . . but youtube probably had something to do with it, with many youtubers like Raid Owl, Level1Techs, and even LTT talking about things like Jellyfin and TrueNAS, it got me curious as to why I never got into it sooner.

I honestly only use debian headless, and manage the server via ssh and manage docker containers via portainer’s web ui.

I’m not new to linux though, so 100% stay with a desktop environment like the one that comes with Mint, because that makes things much much simpler. It’s all debian under the hood at the end of the day, and 95% of services provide install guides for debian-based systems anyways. Is this optiplex 3050 your first homelabbing system?

thanks for this . . . .I keep worrying about security, hardening the system … etc, but forget about the essentials: power and networking. #1 priority for me is to get a UPS this year, once I find a job, that is