When did you decide to start self hosting? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- masonr20 · 2023-12-21 23:52 I'm curious to know, what was the specific moment, or reason, that made you decide to start hosting? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonteponte71 · 2023-12-22 00:05 I bought a NAS purely as a file server initially. After a year or two I looked through what apps was on it and i started offloading my photos and videos from my phone using Synology Photos which worked great. Then I discovered that I could actually run docker on it. Which was where I fell down the rabbit-hole. Now I cannot stop adding docker containers. 18 and counting 🤷‍♂️ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EndlessHiway · 2023-12-22 00:05 When God told me too. Of course it could have just been the voices in my head screwing with me again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- flaming_m0e · 2023-12-22 00:07 20ish years ago... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lucarai · 2023-12-22 00:25 Actually as part of a mom and pop computer shop, some small clientele wanted a feature but didn’t want to pay for the respective appliance. Some video, some storage, self hosting answered it all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grainy69 · 2023-12-22 00:32 When my parents cancelled the Netflix subscription... Everything bad has something good to it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aamfk · 2023-12-22 00:34 I decided to start self-hosting when I grew tired of paying GoDaddy $100/month for a basic cPanel Reseller account. I don't remember how much it was on an annual basis. I was making a LOT more money back then than what I make now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tresillo_Crack · 2023-12-22 00:35 When my high school deleted the unlimited Google drive storage (I had over 1pb of games, videos and backups) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pm_something_u_love · 2023-12-22 00:44 I was sick of the noise of HDDs in my PC so I built a NAS to put them in. I'm a DIY kinda guy so building one rather than buying off the shelf made sense. I was always going to install Debian Linux on it and run Samba. After a while I installed a torrent client on it and a VPN server (since the one on router is quite slow). And then I learned about docker. The same machine has been running for about 8 years now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Accomplished-Lack721 · 2023-12-22 00:50 Self-hosting decided to be started by me. It's like adopting a cat that way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- umairshariff23 · 2023-12-22 00:51 About 8 months ago. It was over a month before I learned about proxmox, the os reinstalls Everytime I fuck something up hau t me to this day!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DefNotJeffrey · 2023-12-22 00:57 i started selfhosting the momement i learned about hypervisors and all the possibilities i had with em, the first thing i learned with them was windows server and Active directory, that with minecraft servers on linux and that made me learn more and more and more to the point where im overloading my current server with everything that is running right now, im waiting for my salary to buy better components so i can overload that one too :P ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dopyChicken · 2023-12-22 00:59 1 pb, that sounds like sheer abuse of service. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thutex · 2023-12-22 01:06 i.... don't remember originally it was over like 20 years ago... like 25ish. i know being on IRC back in the day, in hosting and gaming channels. then slowly got a website from one of the hosts, then kind of took down an entire different host because of, eh... 'unhealthy irc competitive spirits'. then moved on to, from time to time, selfhost a gaming server, originally on my own pc with windows, but when i wanted to make it more dedicated moved it over to linux.... and down the rabbit hole we went. since then i have had servers running either at home, dedicated machines in a data center, virtual machines with a datacenter host, and since a while also oracle cloud. the oldest machine of those that is still running is a vm, and has been doing so for about 10 years (it is one of the only machines that i kept, while all others were switched on several occasions) so i don't remember exactly when i really started self hosting stuff, atleast not in the current form. what i do remember is that way back in the early days i had 1 server colocated in a DC, and paid the provider 'off the books', and also had access to a zeroday dump of movies and shows that was in the same DC (several of the hosters interconnected with each other just for that dump, it was awesome) another (even earlier attempt) 1U server i 'rented and bought' with colo included, turned out to just be a desktop pc thrown in a rack when i finally went to pick it up in that DC... i tell you, those early days were wild.... while we were happy with like 5mbps at home, you could just put a server in the DC, get 100mbps speeds over the internet, and even more with the direct connections to leech stuff... you'd just go out to the DC for a bit of server maintenance with your laptop, and return home with stuff to do for the rest of the month lol and on irc you had a (mostly) healthy competitive spirit between a lot of the smaller hosters that offered hosting and colocation - with a bit less healty days inbetween, but generally it was a great place to be. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zakafx · 2023-12-22 01:09 after i read many many threads \_exactly\_ like this one, i just got sick of it and did it myself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crysisnotaverted · 2023-12-22 01:12 I ain't even mad, that's impressive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- stobbsm · 2023-12-22 01:12 Plex. When plex was still young and open source, I decided I needed it. It’s been a deep deep rabbit hole ever since. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- crysisnotaverted · 2023-12-22 01:13 I was told I would 'own nothing and be happy', said fuck that, and built an ecosystem where I truly could own everything and be happy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FutureLife777 · 2023-12-22 01:14 3 years when i need to attach multiple hard drive. Then start using rasberry pie +;open media vault ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iavael · 2023-12-22 01:17 When I decided to use old PC as a linux router in my dorm when I was studying in university on 00s. Adding services besides basic routing was just a natural step. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xantioss · 2023-12-22 01:24 I think it was 2002, maybe 2003 when I had my first Linux install as a 24/7 server. Hosted some web projects i developed. And a file share for backups. I’m getting old ---------------------------------------------------------------------- desmosquatch · 2023-12-22 01:38 When AWS (amongst others) started cancelling customers with whose philosophies they disagreed, I moved everything to my LAN, dropped all of my AWS resources and cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IReuseWords · 2023-12-22 01:53 Technically mid/late 90s, shortly after I discovered Linux. But if you're referring to spinning up dockers and replacing cloud services with my own and having access to those services remotely with my phone. In the last year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Install_GNU_LINUX · 2023-12-22 02:03 bro you are the reason they deleted it 💀 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Install_GNU_LINUX · 2023-12-22 02:06 not paying for cloud storage 🗿🗿🗿 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- msanangelo · 2023-12-22 02:07 when I was given a computer way back in... oh idk around 2004 I think, and discovered linux. shortly after, I decided I wanted to share media to other computers on the lan and at the time there was only samba then it just progressed from there. only had like two or three desktops at the time and a simple lan with a belkin router. samba shares to vlc, was like magic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Beastmind · 2023-12-22 02:09 When my mutualized hosting got angry at me using a chat app on my phpbb forum because it used too much bandwidth with it refreshing every x secs. After a few months of getting email about it and not being able to set it to their liking and me starting to discover server admin with my school, I got a server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SocietyTomorrow · 2023-12-22 02:17 When my Calibre library was too large to keep on a regular PC, and shortly after, my favorite manga reading app got shut down. Now I have a full network of enablers throwing new apps at me, and sites to add to my data hoarding. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1amTimon · 2023-12-22 02:42 Once Mint announced they are shutting down. I self hosted few apps. Didn’t satisfy. So creating my own budget web app . Funny thing everything done via Chat Gpt. So far done with 80% of basic features I need. Took a week and I replaced billion dollar companies product with my own 😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- funkbruthab · 2023-12-22 02:53 When I was a kid I would use Napster, then limewire, and then the Pirate Bay to “self host” by putting all my music on an mp3 player. Then I self hosted a ventrilo server and a counter strike server when I was in high school. That was kind of it for self hosting for a few decades, until I ran my first plex server on a windows machine about 6 years ago. That windows machine has been my daily driving “gaming” machine since I got it. Earlier this year I dove into Linux for the first time and got a raspberry pi to handle all of the media automation and still ran the plex server on my windows machine, and about a month ago I built my first proxmox machine to house all of my services and hard drives. Been a real crash course in networking, and various command line stuff the last 3 months for me between windows powershell, Mac terminal, and Linux terminals - I’ve been having a blast. Really wish I would have gone into IT when I was starting my career because I’ve been utterly fascinated with learning stuff, I don’t know that I’ve had this hunger to learn anything my whole life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reoccurcat · 2023-12-22 03:08 I wanted to host Minecraft Servers and discord bots and not have to start them up over and over again when my crappy computer rebooted itself (or BSoD'd) and a friend was happy enough to gift his old server to me. Learned Docker and a bunch about Linux (I knew about linux and ran it on my laptop for a good portion of the time, laptop was also crappy though). Installed Proxmox and bypassed the ISP router (Xfinity's crappy choices in web ui and their app forced me to) with OPNsense and got the \*arr stack as well as my website and some other misc stuff running. After I got sick of the heat (that thing was a space heater), I went and grabbed a Dell PowerEdge R720 about two months ago maybe, and haven't looked back. Run Proxmox on it now with around 20 containers as well as virtualized OPNsense. Looking at Ubiquiti as far as networking goes though. I'm stuck in the selfhosting rabbit hole, and I'm perfectly fine with it (for right now, we will see that electricity bill later) \- A 15 year old, got into linux a while before 15 though lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BubbaBallyhoot · 2023-12-22 03:18 When I moved to a house with fiber. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chiefhunnablunts · 2023-12-22 03:18 when every cable channel decided they needed to cash in on streaming services. i don’t want paramount+ or peacock, thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MasterChiefmas · 2023-12-22 03:20 "August 6,1991" Though technically, before that, when I had my own little BBS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sexpusa · 2023-12-22 03:29 God also told me how to run my great ETFs including ARKF and ARKG. They’re only down 60% because it’s God’s plan. Did you know if you buy now you won’t go to hell? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mafyuh · 2023-12-22 03:30 I'm 23 now, as a kid I was always interested in tech, but had no idea how domains or IP's really worked, but I hated having to pay for streaming services, as a broke kid I could NEVER pay for anything even if it was like $1. So I stumbled upon Plex in the Playstation app store, and already knew about torrenting, put 2 and 2 together and had a little Plex server at 14. It was basic, just a hard drive with some files on my dads work computer. Life came around, worked in factory/labor jobs, got out of tech pretty much, But then stumbled across some of NetworkChucks videos on youtube. That guy really can make this relatively boring to talk about hobby exciting. Needless to say I'm fully addicted now. Just the idea that this data is mine and in my control and there's not a damn thing stopping me from what I want to do. With all the hacks and BS going on with giant companies leaking our data, its nice to limit the exposure to those services in the first place by self hosting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sexpusa · 2023-12-22 03:30 I think it started with learning about torrenting movies being safe, then to Jellyfin in my desktop, then wanting to expand to a server, then having two running 24/7 with various containers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bucksnort2 · 2023-12-22 03:33 Growing up, my dad self-hosted some things, a couple websites, an email server (we still use it today), and a bunch of other things he tinkered with for fun and for work. In high school, I learned more about programming and started to get into PC gaming. When I left for college, I learned a bit more about networking. I got a small 5 port switch and played games with my roommates (we couldn’t get a LAN session going on the wifi for some reason). A couple years later (two year break for a mission for my church), I got a new, better laptop. I kept the old one to mess around with. Then I got married, started making some money, and then switched schools. I learned a lot more about computers and started practicing some of the things I learned. I got a couple old computers and I started virtualizing, made a NAS and a media server (started with Plex, switched to Jellyfin). I got another newer, better laptop for school, so the old one now runs qbittorrent for Linux ISOs. I also obtained a raspberry pi, which hosts a Wordpress site. I set up Twingate so I can access my network from anywhere, and I have PiHole running, blocking ads on my whole network. My wife didn’t notice at first, then commented that she sees a lot of ads when she’s out of the apartment compared to inside, so I’d say it’s doing its job well! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dopyChicken · 2023-12-22 03:38 lol. What were you doing that whole of AWS went after you to disagree with you? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dopyChicken · 2023-12-22 03:39 lol, imaging they had a wall in data center just to maintain this person’s games and other junk, XD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DicerosAK · 2023-12-22 04:04 Been computing since dial-up days, never considered trusting somebody else with my stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mauvehead · 2023-12-22 04:05 In the 90’s the it was either you pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a colo.. or you self host. Was a pretty simple decision. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HsSekhon · 2023-12-22 04:33 When I figured port forwarding. Then I created simple html page so I can download files from anywhere in the world which was very cool thing for me. Then I learned css, some jquery, php, sql and made small filemanger web app. Now I am learning swift to make apple apps for my self hosting needs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NullVoidXNilMission · 2023-12-22 04:49 "the cloud" is someone else's computer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AdmiralPoopyDiaper · 2023-12-22 04:59 Wanted to watch movies - which I had been ripping and manually curating in iTunes for years - on an actual TV and not my monitor. Enter Plex. Over a decade later, and here I am setting up a new Jellyfin instance among a few dozen other services in a new 12U rack and stressing over whether moving from RAIDZ2 to mirrored vdevs is really the right move. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-22 05:02 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- speculatrix · 2023-12-22 05:05 I began in the days of dialup. We got at best 44kb/s. I wanted to share my internet connection with other computer's in the house, and had a large squid proxy cache to improve everything, particularly Windows updates because they would all be downloading the same files. Not many sites used https, so it made a huge difference, it gave an effective bandwidth improvement of 75% most of the time ---------------------------------------------------------------------- posting_drunk_naked · 2023-12-22 05:08 When I learned about cloudflare tunnels and realized I could securely access self hosted services from ssl secured endpoints without having to open ports on my home network or other insecure crap. Cancelled my VPS and astronomically increased my power and bandwidth by self hosting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- burger4d · 2023-12-22 05:20 That’s how I got started. Eventually moved away from Synology and went with a DIY server. Synology now serves as a backup NAS that my main server backs up to. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MuhPhoenix · 2023-12-22 06:14 All I wanted was to be happy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sitram · 2023-12-22 06:24 During the COVID pandemic, because I was bored. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dudesque · 2023-12-22 06:46 around 20/25 years ago with hosting direct connect hub and using some kind of vpn to share music librairy with friends ---------------------------------------------------------------------- figadore · 2023-12-22 07:06 This. I just wanted to store files, but then was like, "wait, I don't need to pay subscription fees for ___ cloud service", and it just kept going from there. Now I'm hosting my own "cloud", photos, movies and tv shows, Minecraft, security cameras, home automation, etc. I break it, I fix it, and I don't pay the old subscription fees (just lots of electricity fees) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- echoAnother · 2023-12-22 07:13 When google drive corrupted half my files. Then I said, "If google can do it, I could do it better". And started to selfhost and corrupt my own files. Alas, I have not corrupted the half of them, yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ostromilski · 2023-12-22 07:42 First thing I ever self-hosted was a Multi Theft Auto server, probably when I was 14 or 15 or so. It was actually just a fun experimental server for me and a couple of friends, where I would screw around with Lua and make resources for it to play around with. I remember having to deal with the noise from my PC at night because I wanted the server to remain up. Those were the days... But if we're talking some more "grown up" services like a website, or as like a VPN or something, I remember in uni I use to rent an OVH VPS. Of course, I didn't host anything that resource-intensive on it, cause it was way too underpowered. But I did have the odd database on there, or a uni project or something. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pesfreak92 · 2023-12-22 07:47 I realized that a NAS is cheaper than cloud storage. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- graphics101_ · 2023-12-22 07:47 Saw a network chuck video. Not a fan because some of his content can be a tad misleading such as implying there is no risk to running all of your traffic through a cloud flare tunnel but his content served as a gateway to get into self hosting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Heas_Heartfire · 2023-12-22 07:57 I had a plex server on my pc for years, but it was very inconvenient to need it powered on to watch stuff on my tablet/tv. And so I wondered, and wondered, and wondered... Until I stopped wondering and just did. Now not only I have plex available 24/7 but also a dns server for ad blocking, immich, nextcloud, home assistant... And a minecraft server for me and my friends that we never use but it's nice that it's there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HearthCore · 2023-12-22 08:10 When I wanted to learn with hands on ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PermaBanned23 · 2023-12-22 08:36 I once climbed a mountain, must have been 2008 and the IT god appeared. He told me I should build a Linux server with Samba and KVM. So I did. Every day I praise him with using Samba. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lainio47 · 2023-12-22 08:50 Literally the same. Bought a Synology NAS and found Docker (Before it got renamed). I went into the rabbit hole from then ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonteponte71 · 2023-12-22 08:55 I am going there as well. I have the NAS in the middle of my apartment and I hear the disks grinding aways 24/7 now when it runs applications and is not just serving files. So I have bought myself an HP Elitedesk mini to be my new docker host instead. And let the NAS go back to just serving files. So the next step on my journey is most likely the start of a proxmox cluster 🤷‍♂️ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jbarr107 · 2023-12-22 09:01 In 1985 in college, I found dialup BBS software that would run on my Commodore 64. There weren't any local BBSs in my area so I set it up to run using the phone line in my dorm room. I had a very small handful of regional users and ran it for a few months. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- housepanther2000 · 2023-12-22 09:03 I got started when a friend from work introduced me to dn42 and then I decided to try hosting Mastodon. From there, I became hooked on both home labbing and self hosting. I'm awaiting delivery on a Dell T620 server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill_Guarnere · 2023-12-22 09:05 I perfectly remember when I decided to start self hosting, it was on the 12th of July 2006 when I ordered my first flat rate ADSL with 256 Kbps of download bandwidth and 128 Kbps of upload bandwidth. This may sound crazy to someone grown up when bandwidth is measured in hundreds of Mbps or Gpbs, but at that time it was a lot of bandwidth for me. I started with a Via EPIA-5000A and it was awesome. For the self hosting always been the true reason for having a flat rate DSL internet connection, it was not for the bandwidth or for streaming or other things, it was always self hosting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- housepanther2000 · 2023-12-22 09:12 I looked into a DIY NAS, but in the end it was cheaper to buy a Dell T620 off of Amazon. I found one with 2 Xeon E5-2640v4 processors, 128GB of RAM and 8 3.5 TB SAS drives for 699.00. It'll be a tad energy hungry though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anastasya99 · 2023-12-22 09:14 Does it cost a lot to self host? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SkyeJM · 2023-12-22 09:34 Had a Synology NAS for 1 purpose: local backup of files and our computers. Then Netflix raised their prices so i installed Plex. Then discovered Radarr/Sonarr. Ran out of space, upgraded to a NAS with more bays and bought bigger drives. Discovered this and other subreddits, learned Docker and fell down the rabbit hole. Now the only service i pay for is Synoloy C2 for an extra backup and my domain. Next step is Home Assistant, gonna be fun! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phyraks · 2023-12-22 09:36 When I got fed up with subscriptions for everything being the new standard... And prices constantly rising... When music streaming was becoming commonplace, I was always using trial accounts or just using the ad-supported free versions. I got fed up with the ads and thought to myself "I mostly listen to the same music regularly anyway, so why not just buy the music I want and stream it myself"... I found Plexamp and the rest is history. It's such a a great music app! Over time, I have added other self-hosted services for various reasons, but it all started with music for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-12-22 09:47 I think it was a sunny afternoon in June ---------------------------------------------------------------------- random74639 · 2023-12-22 10:23 I have enough work to be annoyed when some app I need to depend on just up and decides to completely redesign something or change something for no good reason, or keeps telling me how private and safe my data is and then sends me a video of my pictures in a “year wrap up”. Sometimes I question if it was all worth it, because instead of spending couple bucks I bought thousands of USD worth of hardware in an attempt to semi-professionally self host cloud, code repos, media, websites, etc. and now I have to spend more time maintaining it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Haliphone · 2023-12-22 10:39 Same thing. Bought a synology, discovered it can do more and slowly branching out. Once I've got everything configured, and figured out what I need, I'll likely invest in a NUC or something similar to host all the containers and the Synology can go back to file serving/not waking up the cats with the clatter of the hard drives I bought. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hardypart · 2023-12-22 10:54 > Docker (before it was renamed) What do you mean? Docker was renamed!? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ghostly_magus · 2023-12-22 10:57 I'm with you here, pal. 2 Xeon 2697v2 and 128GB of RAM, but I dedicated SAS drives (4 256GB 10k in raid1) for VMs and directly attached to 2 VMs 2 16TB drives (thought about raid 0 and attaching to 1 VM, but I gave up that idea still don't know why). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Anejey · 2023-12-22 11:02 I wanted to make my website I made for a project accessible online, rather than locally via XAMPP. Got tired of having to always move the web files. This then got me into CF tunnels, made me understand networking more, and made me start using an old laptop as a server. From there it just kept expanding. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Lainio47 · 2023-12-22 11:06 It's called container manager in DSM now ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarrenRainey · 2023-12-22 11:19 pretty sure it was hosting a minecraft server on my old laptop for me since at the time was I was pretty young so didn't have a debit card or anyway of paying for server hosting. ​ Probally a few years after that I got a 1st gen raspberry pi and started experminting with stuff like web hosting, coding, file storage etc. ​ And at present I have a few "proper" servers to handle VM's, file storage, programming stuff and just general tasks for learning. My main reasoons for self hosting are control over my own data / information, cost and learning to maintain my own stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tnt1232007 · 2023-12-22 11:45 I pirated since there was no Netflix, or at least in my country. Then come Plex in Windows for my personal use. Then come a Synology NAS so it stays 24/7 for family and friends. I was download manually and using filebot with the Automated Media Center script but quickly move to arrs. Then home assistant and a bunch of other things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- guardian1691 · 2023-12-22 11:46 Anything else different about it? I've come to hate how restrictive the UI is and prefer compose files now, but the UI is handy sometimes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TamSchnow · 2023-12-22 11:57 Started learning docker on my crappy little laptop. It is still used as a Media Server to this day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- foshi22le · 2023-12-22 12:52 I started with a QNAP NAS, I knew absolutely nothing about them but they sounded interesting. And then I discovered docker, and yep, I'm addicted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vote100binary · 2023-12-22 13:02 Back in 1998 when I worked at an ISP and they let me put my old pentium 90 running slackware in our little data room. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jaska001 · 2023-12-22 13:03 2007, got interested in soldat, decided to host a game server on spare PC, then someone requested a forum. then someone linked me an elo ranking system for soldat that runs on xampp. Rest is history. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lexutzu · 2023-12-22 13:39 Netflix being shitty (episodes would appear one day later where I lived vs where I was from), the next season of Star Trek Discovery being pulled from Netflix one or two weeks before release because someone wanted to have its own Netflix. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Toutanus · 2023-12-22 14:37 When google killed google play music. That's when shit got real for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunray_0A · 2023-12-22 14:42 It grew from just messing with stuff 😂 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Croatwink · 2023-12-22 15:06 It was around early 2002 when we had a DSL connection that was always on. It actually started with me testing Linux on my desktop computer, learning about servers, and my first server was on my desktop computer. Later I scrounged used computers to host stuff on. The first thing I remember hosting was my website, and porn. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MegaVolti · 2023-12-22 15:12 Almost the same story for me. But I didn't start with a commercial NAS, I did build my own. It was just a simple Linux (Ubuntu server I think?) system with SMB shares. I was happy with this custom NAS for a few years. Eventually, I installed NextCloud as snap package, just to try it out. Back then, I had no idea what a reverse proxy even is, but the NC snap package was very easy to set up and did work well out of the box. I very much liked NC (I even made a post about my journey to and from NC here: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/ytl7m3/my_slow_p rogression_towards_and_away_from/) and got into the whole self-hosting rabbit hole from there. I used the NC snap for only a couple of months, then I replaced it with a proper stack of docker services, which I have been using for a couple of years now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- durands · 2023-12-22 15:22 I started a couple of month before COVID to learn Linux (I wanted to for years), reduce my dependance on Google service and all streaming service. When COVID dropped I had plenty of free time haha. Three years later it's still going strong. Not gonna lie, starting as a noob on Linux was a steep learning curve but now I can pretty much do what want to do, create my own stuff etc... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ExaminationSerious67 · 2023-12-22 15:56 Google First when they decided to roll Google Music into Youtube, then again when they decided to roll Podcasts into Youtube. Found selfhosted ways to replace what was lost. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- desmosquatch · 2023-12-22 16:06 I'm sure they had no idea that I existed. I left them by my own choice because I didn't want to support censorship. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill_Buttersr · 2023-12-22 16:12 When The Office was taken off Netflix. My parents bought me a collection on disc that Christmas. My plan was to rip it and throw it on Plex. But every step I learned something new, like Jellyfin, reverse proxy, SSL. At that point, adding apps was trivial. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tresillo_Crack · 2023-12-22 16:24 The fun was, when suddently the high school decided to put a size limit in 15gb and I was way over it, so I was spamed by google with emails that my quota was exceded by 700% or more. It was fun to tell it to the principal since I couldn't submit any work into classroom. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HereComesBS · 2023-12-22 16:47 When google killed google music. Started with a humble Navidrome instance on a pi and now I've got two servers, bunch of VM's and the only cloud service I still use is email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- enforce1 · 2023-12-22 17:05 Before saas products existed. Just kept going. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PassiveLemon · 2023-12-22 17:18 Later 2022. I think it was for minecraft and terraria servers. I then explored Docker which promptly accelerated my transition to Linux ---------------------------------------------------------------------- persiusone · 2023-12-22 17:43 Before other hosting options didn't exist and discovering it is the best way to learn how to do this stuff. Since the BBS days for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sailor_MayaYa · 2023-12-22 17:47 I wanted to watch anime but streaming isn't always an option and I got really annoyed at the sound my HDD as I optimized my pc to be silent it was mostly to put my HDD in another room from where I'm sitting ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Frozen_Gecko · 2023-12-22 17:53 Haha me too ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phein4242 · 2023-12-22 18:05 In 1997, to make using UNIX relevant, since that was the only proper network OS back then. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MissionComfortable47 · 2023-12-22 18:22 Started back in the day because the services I wanted didn't exist, them when they did exist I moved to them, but now going back to self hosting because the cost to benefit ratio of using their services is diminishing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- speedhunter787 · 2023-12-22 18:38 I think you can use compose files in the new UI. I still use portainer and put my compose files in there though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LoadingStill · 2023-12-22 18:40 When I lost functions I was paying for because I was no longer paying enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Senior-City-7058 · 2023-12-22 18:49 When i started wondering if there was a way to host my personal sites myself instead of paying heroku and digital ocean every month. To be honest its not about the money though its more for fun at this stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fantastic_Class_3861 · 2023-12-22 20:00 When I bought an iPhone and discovered I couldn’t download Linux ISO’s so I discovered Plex then jellyfin and now I have way more services. It was in 2022. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- acid_etched · 2023-12-22 22:13 When I got tired of emailing my friends old tests in college. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Odd-Steak-2327 · 2023-12-22 23:49 Does my first BBS count, which was either late '80s or early '90s? Just let your dialup modem connect to 0031299641806 (my number at the time) and read about what interested me at the time :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linux-Human · 2023-12-23 00:10 I built a new gaming computer for myself and decided to use my old gaming laptop to host minecraft servers. Then I bought an old computer so I could run more servers. Then I got into other game servers. Then I got another computer to run proxmox and use for servers, then I discovered docker and then I was a lost cause. Jellyfin and all the associated software found its way onto my servers and I haven't slowed down since! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Special-Swordfish · 2023-12-23 16:55 Turn of the century. When an OG linux-iso-sharing forum noticed they had issues running irc. So I ran it. From home. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mistakes-made-me · 2023-12-24 06:33 I created a Netflix frontend clone, then decided to create the backend, but things got complicated easily, and stumbled upon plex/jellyfin somehow.