Teacher here. No professional affiliation with PCs, Linux or self-hosting. Started out with a Synology NAS and got my first experiences with Linux, CLI, Docker, etc. Switched to Unraid last fall and I self-host quite a lot of services now. 100% self-taught.

I don’t work in IT/Tech at all, but I’ve been an enthusiast since I was young, at first piggybacking off of my dad, then developing my own interests as I got into high school and college. I started self-hosting because I found it interesting and as time progressed I saw the benefits of operating things locally. I only host things within my own network though, because I’m not yet comfortable with how to safely set up external access.

I’m a farmer that was an IT guy a decade or so ago, which I guess is a background in it, but that’s not why I do it. Self-hosting is a self-reliance thing. I like to fix my own equipment, metal and silicon.

When it comes apart, I want to know the reason, and I like to invent new ways to do things, which means I have to be able to control my infrastructure.

When they were installing the alarm at my house I noticed that the main guy had nextcloud on his phone and it sparked a nice conversation about privacy. He has no technical background but managed to self-host it on his old laptop with one of those distros that have an easy UI for self-hosting (don’t remember which one exactly). He’s a pretty cool guy.

Warehouse worker who self hosts stuff here.

It all started when I was a teenager and I lost access to my photobucket account…

No background but I can read and listen. There are plenty of resources around.

I started out of privacy concerns and I wanted to deGoogle It started this year with a RPI and pihole. Then I saw Mealie, bought a domain, and started sharing recipes with my family.

At first I messed around with Casa OS. It’s like a gateway drug. So easy to use and get stuff running.

Last week a 2nd hand i5 arrived and now I moved everything to proxmox. The RPI is still running pihole. At the moment I’m setting up Immich and I’m thinking about buying a NAS.

Since it is a new hobby I keep everything low cost. If it sticks I’ll invest in a proper home server.

I don’t work in IT at all. My self hosting journey started when I got sick of feeling powerless in the face of big tech companies who are increasingly ripping off customers or violating their right to privacy. There’s also the general mistrust that comes from my data being repeatedly breached or leaked because share holder profits are more important than investing in basic security.

Medical device engineer here (mechanical engineering). I host jellyfin, game servers (Minecraft, factorio, valheim, etc), my website, and a bunch of other minor services I find useful.

I got into it originally through a combination of poor internet, and being fed up with Google and others discontinuing products/features. The internet problem is solved now, so my only goal is not being reliant on someone else’s cloud.

I have no formal IT education. But I grew up on computers when command line was how you got things done.

I’m “techy”, but not in a tech career. By that I mean I’ve always been casually interested in tech, and enjoy building my own PCs, and am usually the one people come to for tech help, even if I just end up googling it for them haha.

Got into hosting through Home Assistant and Foundry VTT.

Hosting videogames on a dedicated box for me and the boys when I was 16 got me more interested in networking and when I had finished my mostly unrelated education, I pivoted hard to IT. I don’t currently work in IT and I don’t know if I ever will again because my handicap and location make it hard to find jobs but essentially:

Self-hosting came first, then came the tech ‘background’.

Psychologist by training, production planner by trade. I started using Linux around 15 years ago on my laptop. My self hosted journey started with a Chromecast plugged in a TV and I would cast file from my laptop. Fed up on how laggy and buggy the set up was I installed Kodi on my laptop. Then, I bought a SBC and a few years later a refurbished NUC for few bucks.

I now selfhost around 10 services but nothing too complex (jellyfin, grocy, paperless, etc). I know how to set up a docker image and thinker a bit with config files but I rely heavily on guides for tasks more complex than that. There are a few services that I would like to setup but as I get older I get less joy from setting up a system than using it and the hours I can invest on this are unfortunately limited.

Started with running a minecraft realm then it grew to the point greifers became a problem so we needed plug-ins for protection. So that led to having a managed hosted server then a VPS and then finally self hosting

I clean construction site toilets. I wanted to run my own game and media severs and ended up with a Dell Poweredge, a synology 1u NAS and some ubiquity gear

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

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