There are so many options to get started with self hosting that I feel myself stuck in the “paralysis of choice”. For a novice, does anyone have a good resource for the equivalent of good/better/best paths that cover the “basics” (In my mind this is hosting images, music, video, connected home controls, search and email)?
Thinking something like first try path A, if you feel comfortable and your HW can handle A, then try path B, etc. I guess a it of a tutorial mode feeling where you get exposed to key boxing blocks initially and then you are released into the large open world on your own.
I know the advantage of this movement is the choice and the well distributed variety, but just feels hard to start.
I have an old laptop, an SFF workstation and a NAS to play with.
Any suggestions?
Edit: Thank you all for a very generous response. I knew this was a tough ask from the start because, by design, this area is vast and constantly evolving. A lot of great starting points here that I’m now considering.
Start with a problem. What you trying to solve. Hosting music is different from backing up your computer. That is different from a home dashboard.
In clearest terms, I want to completely erase Google from my life first, among other wants. Not expecting you or others to flee with detailed solutions/recommendations, but just to illustrate. My priority is likely:
Photos, all photos, app accessible locally for my family (and ideally remotely, eventually)
Notes, no more keep, but the basic flow of that app works for me, so similar UX hopefully without overcomplicating.
Music, local library accessible to stream throughout my home on capable devices and app accessible. Remotely accessible by app, if possible.
TV / Movies, as above with music, but ability to control with harmony remote on a TV and not keyboard/mouse ideally (but I do have decent workarounds here currently)
Optionally run all above through a self hosted, local voice assistant or mounted HW buttons.
Corresponding hue light control for media events, presence detection (maybe motion detection by room) and sun schedule. All without data going back to any 3p servers.
Nice to haves:
Calendar away from google, that allows simple external appointment scheduling, shared calendars and great colorful, visual organization of a coming week. Ideally a safe, private way for calendar to connect to and create events from emails.
Email, my own data and ability to use aliases that route back to main with corresponding tags ideally
Owning my online bookmarks, browser/device agnostic, with usable recall help, auto tags and read it later structure so saved articles don’t just fall into the abyss. IIRC there was something called something like “Shinobi” that felt exciting for this need?
looking at your list, make sure you have a good understanding of whatever tool you are going to use and a place to back up your photos before you remove them from Google or where ever you have your photos stored.