I assume most users here have some sort of tech/IT/software background. However, I’ve seen some comments of people who might not have that background (no problem with that) and I wonder if you are self-hosting anything, how did you decide that you would like to self-host?
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Are you me?
I love unRAID so much. It’s crazy how just a simple GUI can help solidify docker concepts.
I’m a college professor in the humanities (religious studies, history). Got into linux about 5 years back, partly because it comports better with my lefty politics than the alternatives, but also just because I’ve long been a closet computer nerd. I currently run a couple of proxmox servers on old optiplexes I grabbed off ebay. Full *arr stack with jellyfin on docker, a Tails VM for TOR stuff, NAS (omv on a vm), some other dockerized stuff: linkding, radicale, alexandrite (a self-hosted lemmy client, which I’m currently writing this on), various backup utilities.
It’s basically just a hobby for me, though the switch to linux has also totally changed my academic workflow, e.g. I do all my writing in nvim + latex now, use syncthing to sync my home desktop, laptops, and office computer, etc. I dig divesting myself from corporate computing to the greatest extent possible, appreciate the privacy benefits, and generally just enjoy the community-driven spirit of the whole thing.
Just getting started but yeah, I have basically no technology background. Mostly I’m too stubborn to know when to quit something so here I am lol.
Sufficiently qualifiedd to be working in IT.
Former USAF JAG here (lawyer). I was always a tech geek, undergrad major was in MIS actually, but I didn’t enjoy coding. Always ran Plex on the side, built my own computers, etc. Grew up with my Dad using Linux everywhere (I found this annoying as I just wanted to play games on Windows).
I didn’t enjoy law (surprise!). I was disillusioned with the criminal justice system too. Quit the law in 2020. Then suddenly had quality time by global happenstance to rethink my life path.
I work in IT now. Restarted at the bottom of a new career but I’m in deep nerd territory now - Proxmox servers, Home Assistant, networks with VLANs, OPNsense router, 22U server rack, Linux as my daily driver, etc.
Much happier now.
As someone who majored in CS and is now in a software engineering position, the people in tech who come from a completely different field are always my favorite. On top of just proving people wrong about the “right” way to get into the field, they’ve been around, they know how to think about problems from other perspectives, and they’re usually better at working with other people.
Honestly, I think more people should minor in CS, or if they did their undergrad in CS, they should have to do their grad work in something else. The ability to compute things is only useful if you’re well versed in a problem worth computing an answer to, most of which lie outside of CS.
I’m currently doing comp sci but have always debated doing comp eng or ee. However, I don’t want to do comp eng or ee as a career, just more as a side hobby. So I’m sticking with comp sci and I’ll do all the comp eng and ee stuff at home.
I’ve worked in auto repair and real estate. Have no professional experience.
Why self-host? Because its cool. And for privacy. And save a few bucks on subscriptions.
As someone with a strong tech background, that’s just impressive to me. It’s cool to see non-technical people are interested in self-hosting too, and for good reason.
I didn’t say I was good at it. I’ve used various GUIs that simplify things a bit (Yunohost, CasaOS, ZimaOS, Runtipi, Unraid, TrueNAS, etc. but they all seem to be missing different things that each other have. Yunohost makes things as simple as possible.
Still impressive imo, I have friends who work in IT who don’t even self-host lol
I don’t blame a lot of IT professionals for not wanting to self host. Especially if they are maintaining services for a living. When you do that same thing you do at work at home it gets very annoying quickly.
I’m just an idiot that tinkers with things. I’ve got a TrueNAS Scale system up and running as network storage and Plex storage. There’s about 44TB of raw capacity in there right now, connected via a server SAS card. I just follow tutorials if I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Am also an idiot. I have several raspberry pis and UPS boards mostly operating on hopes and dreams, and the most useful things I do are a single-user nextcloud instance that’s even accessible over the Internet, and a smb drive that’s always accessible
I also am sometimes of a idiot
I like to call myself a professional idiot. I love tinkering with my homelab setup.
My father in law was a commercial pilot and he had a home server just to keep photos and travel writing while he was flying and away from home a lot. I helped him upgrade some of that to the cloud, since that makes for sense when on the other side of the country, but he still has a bunch of stuff at home.
I have no tech background, and I am just getting into creating a media server. I started with an old secondhand Synology NAS, which developed a power issue within a month and no chance of returning it or getting it covered by warranty.
My current plan is to get another Synology NAS (new with extended warranty this time), along with a spare HDD enclosure so I can have an extra layer of redundancy, finally set up Jellyfin, and then I want to build a Pihole. At that point I won’t need much more self hosting or networking tricks until further notice.
Still have no idea what I’m doing.
yes! structural engineer here, computers has been my passion for a long time and self hosting is a joy! i have learnt a ton in the past year about networking, security and so many things!
I work in emergency management but I’ve always been interested in tech as a hobby. That led me to start self-hosting Plex on my desktop about 6-7 years ago. Now I’ve got a dedicated machine running unraid with about 20 to 30 different docker services.
I really enjoy being able to figure out how to setup a service and then being able to be fully in control of how it works. Beyond just enjoying tinkering with the system to learn, I enjoy being able to troubleshoot and fix problems without relying on large companies.
If plex counts… Then also me. I work in retail. I can’t escape. I have a degree in tech, but not enough work experience.
I’m a farmer that was an IT guy a decade or so ago, which I guess is a background in it, but that’s not why I do it. Self-hosting is a self-reliance thing. I like to fix my own equipment, metal and silicon.
When it comes apart, I want to know the reason, and I like to invent new ways to do things, which means I have to be able to control my infrastructure.
Honestly it would be really cool to see more self hosting in the farming space. I want to see a iot system that it run by the farmer.
Before we know it there will be a server room at each farm
Former attorney who now consults for corporate compliance departments/programs. I have zero formal training or professional practical experience, but tech has always been my strongest hobby. I decided to self host as much as possible almost 20 years ago starting with media libraries and email; it stemmed from a deep distrust of the tech industry.
Self hosting is your pathway to a tech background.
University for comp sci, in my experience around the space, is a complete waste of time. Just a piece of paper that may or may not equip the recipient with some skills that may or may not be relevant.
University is ok if you’re starting at zero and don’t even know what’s out there. It’s for exposing students to a a breadth of topics and some rationale of why things are as they are, but not necessarily for plugging them into a production environment.
Nothing beats having your own real world project, either for motivation or exposure to cutting edge methods. Universities have tried to replicate that with things like ‘problem based learning,’ and they probably hope that students will be inspired by one or two of the classes to start their own out-of-class project, but school and work are fundamentally different ways of learning with fundamentally different goals.
Mechanical engineer here self-hosting my own Lemmy and Pixelfed instances in a Yunohost VM on an old Ubuntu box. It just feels better being my own admin.
Kudos for self-hosting fediverse stuff, man.
Programming and self hosting the results when I was ~14 is what led me to a tech background. No university, but I’ve been working professionally in both IT and software for over a decade and self hosting even longer.
