Learn to self host now.

@daria Reasonable folks could have different opinions on this, but I consider self-hosting to be "I administer the server and manage the software", and I'm willing to include "someone else manages the hardware" as part of that.

So, IMO a VPS counts. But I'd consider whether that's necessary or if you can get away with running your stuff on an old PC should the need arise.

@vkc any good guides to recommend to newbies?

@Meznor dozens of them, but it depends on what you want to self host.

For a lot of things, Nextcloud is a reasonable place to start, and their docs are pretty good. The community snap for Ubuntu, in particular, is very easy if you're new and just trying to get your feet wet.

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/source_installation.html

@vkc On Tor

@Meznor @vkc

Maybe you can start with @yunohost

https://yunohost.org/

@vkc i did it for years. Server is still downstairs but I am not yet prepared to light it up again, but I did love IBM Domino.

@vkc if you dont know or dont want to bother with manually setting up nextcloud, or other things, it seems like https://yunohost.org helps with easily setting up a server and installing various services in it. just in case someone finds it interesting.

@redliria@neopaquita.es @vkc@linuxmom.net there is also https://cosmos-cloud.io/

@vkc My Synology NAS is starting to buckle under the weight of all these containers

@vkc YES, and may the network remain free enough to let us have it be useful enough for it to matter.

@vkc I'm trying to self-host almost every service that allows self-hosting. It's not really hard, it just takes time to learn how to set up and maintain the servers (also, good hardware helps a lot with performance). I usually self-host with @nextcloud.

I'm thinking about hosting my own Mastodon instance now, but I need to upgrade my RAM because I already have a lot of servers running on my machine.