this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Hello, I’ve recently discovered self hosting and I really want to get into it. I’m not going to fully deep dive now, but I at least want to know the basics before I start my own journey. So today I came to ask if anybody has a roadmap or recommends a path for me to get into self hosting.

As far as Linux goes, I’m currently on Mint but only know how to update and switch/list directories. I do not know docker but understand the basics of it. This also goes for tailscale.

I know what a NAS is and how it works and the different Raids and when to use which one. I know what I want to self host but I am not sure if I want to use docker or proxmox. I’m also don’t understand the proxmox and how it works. Any information or tutorial would be highly appreciated. Thanks you

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure which guides to recommend, but in case it helps narrow down your search, you could share more about your situation:

  • Do you have any existing hardware or are you planning to buy? If so, what is the budget for the equipment and where in the world are you approximately?

  • What did you want to self host? Some services would benefit from a certain type of setup. For example, if you're serving lots of media, if you need redundancy and uptime, if you're running AI models or something that needs a GPU

General tips:

  • take lots of notes on your process. This will help you iteratively improve your setup. If it all falls apart, it will be easier to quickly get going again since you know what options you picked at each step.
  • Make more posts here when you get stuck on something :)

For Linux, a lot of people go with Ubuntu server because there are a lot of existing guides for it. You don't need much Linux knowledge to start self hosting since you can learn by doing over time. Some concepts to explore before getting started might be cron, the Linux file system, and user permissions.

For Docker, you should be fine if you know the basics. I'd recommend using Docker Compose since it's easier to understand what's happening when its written out in a nice yaml file. Install Docker and Docker Compose on the server, and then install something like DockGE to manage the compose files. When you want to run a service, copy the Docker compose file and then swap the port to what port you want to use, and the volume to the location you tend to use.

For a very basic setup, I'd find a video guide for

  • installing Ubuntu server on the machine
  • basic setup of the Ubuntu server (file permissions, docker, docker compose)