Selfhosted

A friend in high school helped me install a counter strike server on linux on an old desktop. From there, I experimented with hosting some forums and an upload script to save files remotely. In the days way before the cloud was a thing. That got me interested enough to start figuring things out and get into it.

Some friends from high school and I were in an Cisco A+ class together. One night we ordered pizza, and after finishing it - we took the larger of the boxes, cleaned it out, and turned it into a server. We ended up running a few different game servers on there with the first being CS:Source, I believe. When that died, I started a 1&1 VPS that ran a Dark Age of Camelot freeshard for a while.

Ever since the CS1.6 days I wanted to have a server, but it was only when I got a free Raspberry Pi that I actually started self hosting stuff 24/7. I put OwnCloud on it and a bunch of scripts to track and statistically evaluate my investments, and just took off from there. Like many others, my desire to disconnect and reduce my dependency on "Big Tech" was a big motivator, but so too was "fun" and having things exactly the way I liked.

In the beginning I rolled my own scripts most of the time, but now I tend to use more off the shelf tools as self hosting has gone more and more "mainstream"/accessible and docker has become ubiquitous.

I still do my own scripts tbf, like my DIY smart thermostat/heat pump controller. Ultimately it's just a lot of fun.

Started off with just hosting a permanent Minecraft Server on a Raspberry Pi. Later added stuff like Nextcloud or Calibre Web to it and now it's just a teensy tiny bit out of control (I'm self-hosting a good 2 dozen services now).

I started off hosting UT2004 servers at LAN parties back in the day then Tremulus? servers, then coubter-strike 1.5/1.6/cz. Started learning VPS with CS:S.

I got a raspberry pi and some wd red drives when Google photos went for a pay model. We use it to back up our phones and pc, and to run jellyfin and torrents. It's not wildly different from doing things on pc, except it's set it and forget it. Having something always on, reliable, and "just works" makes it worthwhile.

@SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org I wrote my own music player, after that I installed PiHole. After that I realized there were much better music players out there :-P

A desire to set up a permanent download station that could extremely securely and very automatically keep track of all the Linux distributions (eg I really want to make sure I try every version of Mint Linux and with various arr programs I could ensure that as soon as a new version of Mint shows up, I automatically download it and get it shown in an interface where I can try the new version of Mint Linux. Linux distributions - I just love them!!