I use Nextcloud Memories for uploading folders to quickly share to relatives. Love it, very straightforward for them to use.

I also host Immich but unlike Memories not exposed, local only. I set Immich up because we found we never looked at our photos when they were just stored on a hard drive but we look at them much more now theyre easily accessible. I spent months slowly retrospectively tagging & adding geo locations to our photos in order to utilise the powerful search capability of Immich. I use the template option & set it up to match the folder structure of our photos.

I’m using Kopia to back up the entire Immich directory including the nightly Immich-db dumps & ive also moved a backup of the backup to another drive, currently somewhere in the region of about 80+GB.

I have a couple of USB Hauppauge TV receivers in our HTPC which I use with NextPVR. I cut the ads from the recordings then bang them into Jellyfin

I’ve found Nextcloud to be fantastic, its why I started self hosting.

Ive run Nextcloud on a Pi4B with 4GB ram & external HDD with just one user. I also sync Joplin notes, which I use constantly. Additionally used Collabora Office on the phone for syncing office docs. i was happy with this set up for a long time, had no issues really, synced between a couple of desktops & a phone.

Eventually treated myself to a Pi5 8GB ram with NVMe & an Argon fanless case. Main reason for upgrade was an additional Nextcloud need - to share holiday/trip/event photos with multiple non tech savvy older family members via the Memories plug in. This set up has been absolutely rock solid, absolutely no issues & for my needs has been blazing fast. Memories is great too for quick & easy sharing whilst away. The family members love it (Nextcloud is exposed behind Nginx Proxy Manager, I send them a read only public link for Memories)

As they are quite intensive I recently migrated Immich & Paperless from Pi4B 4GB to a Beelink EQ14 but I see no reason at all to migrate Nextcloud from the Pi5.

I couldnt give a flying fuck what this clown thinks. My brand new Beelink EQ14 came with Win11. Its now running Ubuntu server

Bingo. Self hosting is my first exposure to Linux, I’m still a novice. Just migrated a couple of my Pi servers onto a Beelink EQ14. After a bit of reading i decided to install Ubuntu server on it purely because I’m more likely to glean answers from online forums & the like when inevitability hit a barrier.

I’m highly likely to dual boot my laptop/switch to linux Mint soon too

Once had problems with an internal drive so each device I run uses an external SSD/HDD. Anything important that has an “export data” or backup option such as Paperless I’ll export/backup & put that into Nextcloud. Nextcloud files are synced between multiple desktops, one of which then gets automatically backed up to a separate drive each week.

For all my other self host stuff I since deployed Kopia to perform nightly local backups of each thing I self host. Once per month a Kopia backup for each software gets moved to a separate drive.

On top of that, things I deem as particularly important get encrypted in Cryptomator & uploaded off site.

No doubt there’s probably better/easier ways but thats my current workflow.

Until they enforce government ID verification on every website & ban VPN’s. Mark my words, that’s what they’ll try to push under the guise of “save the children”

Actual AI for scientific research I’m OK with.

But AI shit crammed into literally everything. No sir, I hate it sir.

I dont work in IT so I may have misconceptions so I’m open to being corrected. What I dont understand is general AI/LLM usage. One place I frequent, one guy literally answers every post with “Gemini says…”. People just dont seem to bother thinking any more. AI/LLM doesnt seem to offer any advantage over traditional search & you constantly gave to fact check it. Garbage in, garbage out. Soon it’ll start learning from its own incorrect hallucinations & we won’t be able to tell right from wrong.

I have succumbed a couple of times. One time it actually helped (I’m not a coder, it was a coding related question which it did help with). With a self host/Linux permissions question it fucked up so badly I actually lost access to an external drive. Im no expert with linux, Im learning & managed to resolve it myself.

AI answers have been blocked from DDG on all my devices.

Top tip: use good glass cleaner before waxing all of the glass too. Rain will slide off much faster.

For me not at all. I’m old enough to research & shop for what I need rather than impulse buy. Tech wise I dont very rarely see any ads at all thanks to strong ad blocking & general privacy consciousness. I try to stick to open source only & fediverse is the only social media I use. For YouTube I never sign in to so I’m not affected by the algorithm & never see ads on it ever (channels I like are in a Joplin note synced between devices). Broadcast TV is recorded via HTPC & ads stripped before episodes are fed into Jellyfin.

I dont “get” influencers. Even back in the day I used to ask why celebrities always put their name to perfume/aftershave as I’d only buy what I liked the smell of regardless of the brand/name.

Yeah, I know I’m an outlier, even my mates take the piss.

I share a similar stance on general street surveillance by the likes of Ring. But on the flip side I understand that people may want to extend the scope of security cameras onto the street due to vehicle vandalism for example, so I make sure to smile my sweet smile when I notice them.

Thanks to @Charger8232@lemmy.ml & @irmadlad@lemmyis.fun for yet another perfect example of what I love about Fediverse, this is why it’s so much better than “the other place”

Alternative for DuckDuckGo:

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%25s

Edit: Lemmy/Voyager formats this string with 25 at the end. Remove the 25 & save it as a browser search engine

Beelink EQ14 is an excellent choice as a server & sips electricity. Added bonus, it’s almost silent.

It matters not if you use Libre Office

I’m 100% self taught & was in exactly the same place. I’d never used Linux before I got my first Pi. I spent a bit of time trying to familiarise myself with & made some notes regarding command line (notes I still rely on).

There’a so many ways to achieve the goal, you’ll eventually find a way that works for you. My personal preference was Docker/Docker Compose deployed via Portainer.

Even that was confusing. Until I found this excellent video on how to read Docker requirements & apply them step by step into Portainer. He explains slowly & methodically exactly what he is doing & why.

Portainer is a method of handling Docker stacks/containers via a web UI. Both Docker & Portainer are simple to install.

It’s easier to use Docker Compose files and/or .env (environment variable) files (both are even simpler to deploy through Portainer) but this video taught me what was going on & gave me confidence to have a go. What attracted me to Docker is you can easily remove stacks/containers if/when you make a mess rather than wiping the drive & start again, which is how I went about things initially.

This gave me the tools to set up Nginx Proxy Manager & I never looked back.

As you’ve realised, a robust backup solution is essential (plus off site backup for particularly important stuff) as things will inevitably go wrong along the way (I see Borg, Restic mentioned often, I went for Kopia).

I can’t recommend highly enough making detailed notes along the way, I rely on Joplin.

If you start using Docker, dont fall into the trap of using the “latest” tag. If you know the version number you’re running its far easier to re-deploy if an update is bad.

Enjoy your new time consuming, teeth gnashingly frustrating …and yet rewarding hobby 👍

I forwarded this to my neighbour who is really into self hosting, particularly home automation stuff - has a pretty awesome Home Assistant set up. First thing they said? “But I’m 70, this only goes to 69”

I told him in that case he must dismantle his self hosted servers immediately 😁

Late arrival but in case it helps:

I’m 100% self taught. I’d never used Linux before I got my first Pi & struggled to get Nextcloudpi working, which I did eventually. But support came to an end so maintenance was going to become an issue so I had to learn.

I found this excellent video on how to read Docker requirements & apply them step by step into Portainer. He explains slowly & methodically exactly what he is doing & why.

Portainer is a method of handling Docker stacks/containers via a web UI. Both Docker & Portainer are simple to install.

It’s easier to use Docker Compose files and/or .env (environment variable) files (both are even simpler to deploy through Portainer) but this video taught me what was going on & gave me confidence to have a go. What attracted me to Docker is you can easily remove stacks/containers if/when you make a mess rather than wiping the drive & start again, which is how I went about things initially.

This gave me the tools to set up Nginx Proxy Manager & I never looked back. Highly recommend a robust backup solution as stuff will inevitably go wrong along the way (I see Borg, Restic mentioned often, I went for Kopia).

I can’t recommend highly enough making detailed notes along the way. I rely on my Joplin notes all the time.

One more tip. Once you start using Docker, dont fall into the trap of using the “latest” tag. If you know the version number its far easier to re-deploy if an update is bad.

Enjoy your new time consuming, teeth clenching, frustrating …and rewarding hobby 👍

Save notes? Joplin has a configurable backup plugin built in. From memory you need to go to Options >Plugins & enable it.

Edit: I just saw you meant sync. Several ways with Joplin. Been syncing through Nextcloud with WebDAV which has worked great syncing between several devices ever since I started using Joplin. On Android you need to keep the screen on during initial sync which can take a while but after that sync is a couple of seconds.

No it doesnt. It leans that way on the official site but self hosters tend to use github or similar rather than official websites.

Source: Been self hosting it for months for free (I intend to donate to Linkwarden when I do my next round of self host/FOSS donations)

Might be worth looking into FLIRC USB