Nobody is addressing tailscale so far, so I'll throw my two cents in: I have tailscale on my phone and my laptop, and I have a bunch of stuff running at home, and they all act like they're on the same network as long as I'm logged in. There are a lot of alternatives out there, but I find it quite useful. I have immich for my pictures and pihole for ad blocking using docker. The basic docker tutorials are worth following. All I really use is docker ps, docker image docker compose up (-d), docker pull. Nano to edit the yaml files I find online. Unhacked so far!
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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FWIW, if you want to learn how to use the command line, docker, and how to manage and secure your services, I'd recommend installing Ubuntu server or Fedora server on the NucBox; and then install docker and learn how to get your services stood up using the docker cli.
This is the route I went specifically because I wanted to learn more about Linux, and how to manage a server and services.
The tools being offered as suggestions (unraid, truenas, yunohost) are abstraction layers meant to make hosting easier. And to be clear, there is nothing at all wrong with these tools or using them. What they'll do is give you a GUI to manage your system and services, making using the command line mostly unnecessary. Again, nothing at all wrong with that. Just depends on what you want.
Regarding exposing the services, it's good to be cautious. I went with Pangolin, which is like a self hosted version of tailscale/cloudflare tunnels (I'm simplifying a bit).
Pangolin allows you to access your services over a VPN tunnel, and, to set your desired level of authorization needed to access that service. I really like it and have found it to be very reliable.
Also, FWIW, I'm not in IT or an expert. Just a person who wanted to learn about Linux and self hosting to take back control from big tech.
You can install Yunohost on your home server. I've been running it that way on various machines for years. It's just built on Debian Linux. I love it, and find it way easier than Docker. That said, you will be limited to the apps available (have a look at their catalog) in comparison to Docker. If you vibe with Docker then power to you. It has some good features. One more option I'd like to mention, specifically for the *arr stack/media server is Swizzin Community Edition. It's another non-Docker, super easy setup. Also, don't be fooled: you can install it locally too :)
I tried to install tipi.io but the arrs wouldn’t talk to each other and I couldn’t figure out docker networking. Does yunohost work mostly ootb?
I don't run my *arr stack on Yunohost, but I'm sure it will make them all accessible ootb. You will probably need to point them to one another where necessary from within their web config. For example, sonarr will need to know where your torrent client is. So in your sonarr config you'll tell it that qbittorrent (or whatever) is at localhost:1243 (or whatever port qbittorrent is running on.
Hi and welcome to the club.
First of all a disclosure I am not an IT guy and or programmer and barely know what I am doing myself :D
My first question is: Is your Nuc dedicated hosting hardware?
If so i would maybe suggest an OS that is more hosting focused, I personally use unraid, a friend of mine already used it at the time and helped me set everything up so I just went with it. TrueNAS is the real og and workhorse of the selfhosting world and also big in the professional space. Unraid is pretty simple but more heavy on sytem useage while truenas is more light weight but needs a bit more work beeing done manually. TrueNAS is free, undraid you pay a one time license. Those are the big 2 I know about.
Both of these options have an insane ammount of documentation. And ready to go docker for basically anything you could want.
There is of course much more, for example Debian server comes to mind. If this is not dedicated hosting hardware and you need a normal desktop environment I can't help much there.
As far as I understand: Never expose anything directly to the internet. Tailscale is a good option, I personally use nginx proxy manager as reverse proxy. Both should be fine but Tailscale is more secure tho. I also only have 3 things exposed: Nextcloud, Immich and foundry vtt. And keep your shit up to date :D
Hope this helps for now. If you have any additional questions or I missed an important part for you just ask :)
Unraid is pretty beginner-friendly, so it's what I'd recommend too.
I use it too. I have over 20 years experience running Debian servers and can write a docker-compose.yml file and Nginx config from scratch, but sometimes it's nice to have a decent web UI that mostly "just works".
you can selfHost Yuno.
you don't need cloud for it unless you want to.
Yeah running all the services in docker is good. A lot easier than managing stuff installed directly.
I recommend not exposing anything to the Internet except your VPN, to minimize risk. I recently set up Netbird and found it very simple.
Did you mean to say you recommend against exposing services?
Oops, yes. I think halfway through the sentence I forgot where I was putting the negative.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| nginx | Popular HTTP server |
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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