started with a simple media server, now i’m running my own mail, calendaring, document storage, password manager, vpn, monitoring, and probably half a dozen other things i’ve forgotten about. my wife just asks if “the internet is working” now, not ‘is netflix down’. it’s glorious, but also… a lot. anyone else go from zero to homelab hero in record time? what kicked off your journey into the self-hosted abyss?
Minecraft server on a laptop. Life has never been the same since.
Probably about the time BBS became more popular. I guess there was arpnet, and all these nets, mostly for science, academics, or governmental. Then they essentially rolled it all into one and viola! The internet was born. (It’s a bit more involved) I’ve hosted BBS, forums, chats, irc, a fully licensed/automated internet radio station with live shows with requests et al, <deep breath> services, websites, you name it.
Unfortunately, my brain is shit now, and I’ve forgotten so much. So, sometimes I have to re-learn on a cyclical basis. Plus, the technology is moving now at such a blinding speed, what I did even 5 years ago is old school. Needless to say, I keep copious notes. Somebody is gonna go through all my stuff when I’m gone and think ‘What the devil? This looks like some weird kind of manifesto in some sort of long forgotten code.’ LOL
Ive run a servarr stack for media with Plex for a long time, but recently deciding to degoogle led me to start replacing services like Photos with Immich, and it snowballed from there. The more the merrier!
