Hi there! This is a video that I made that I’m hoping can act as a beginner friendly entry level point to the world of self hosting and running a homelab. Just thought I’d share in case anyone is interested, and I hope it can be a resource to share with noobies. I don’t claim to be an expert at all so I’d also love some feedback. Thanks!
Persist with the video! The text-to-speech is only for a couple of quick screens - the rest is very personal, and they cover a bunch of use cases.
If you really don’t want to, the server OS they recommend around two-thirds of the way through is YunoHost, a beginner-friendly way to run services as containers on any capable spare computer. The YunoHost website has a bunch of use cases that are also covered in the video.
I’m pretty comfortable running Debian on servers. I just don’t understand why I’d want the hardware at home instead of remote. I don’t have much space at ome, and my home internet is crappy.
Also addressed in the video! Neither I nor the video creator has any stake in what you choose to do, and I’d prefer not to rehash the whole video for you since it’s right there for you to watch if you’re interested in this topic, but the main points were generally about reducing subscription costs and gaining better control of content (e.g. no surprise removals of music, videos, and ebooks).
I’m not into video, I didn’t want a rehash, I was hoping for a 1 sentence summary or the like. I don’t have any subscriptions and my music and ebooks are on the client and I don’t understand the attraction of putting them on a server. I guess the thought is that many people use their phones for media consumption, with limited local storage particularly on old iphones, but I’m not set up that way. I like having the files local instead of streaming them.
It’s not about me personally but rather (regarding media) about how a streaming setup is better than local file storage for stuff like ebooks. Even for a phone user, phone storage is cheap now, especially if your phone has an SD slot. One big attraction of servers for me is fast internet, but that means hosted servers rather than home since my home internet is slow.
I’m something of a a luddite but I’ve generally tried to stay away from “smart home” stuff, streaming subscriptions, etc. So I’m trying to figure out if home servers are more of the same.
Because plenty of us do have space and have good internet. You don’t have to, and that’s totally fine.