UPDATE: To everyone who suggested YUNO, thank you so much. This seems like it is about to make my journey much easier. It is basically almost exactly what I was looking for, but I was unaware that it existed.
Thank you ALL for your suggestions, actually. It’s a bit overwhelming for an almost complete noobie but I an going to look into all of the suggestions in time. I just saw that there were several mentions of YUNO so I decided to make that one of the first things I investigated.
So, about two months ago, I had a very eye opening experience. As the result of a single misconfigured security setting on my Android, I was locked out of my Google Account on my phone AND all of my PCs. I had no access whatsoever to Google, or any of the literally hundreds of services that I get through Google.
This is when I realized that I relied entirely on Google/Android because those two days were actually very difficult, being cut off from media, services, passwords, everything, from the past almost twenty years of my life, could be taken away from me in an instant. The decades of my life that were locked away in my Google Account included hundreds of thousands of pictures, almost a hundred thousand audio tracks, several hundred books, several hundred apps, thousands of videos, etc. ad infinitum. Unfortunately, very little of this material was backed up at that point. That is my fault. Also, the misconfigured security setting was my fault as well.
The amount of data, media, memories, services, etc. that would have been lost is actually endless and it would have affected my life in several ridiculously negative ways.
Luckily, in the end, I was able to get my access back and then basically immediately grabbed all of the several terabytes of information and media of mine that they had, and that I was almost locked out of. I have it all in my house now on a drive in my computer, with a backup made on another disconnected disk.
I then decided that no corporation was ever going to have such an insanely high level of influence on and control over my entire life and my media ever again. That experience was actually very scary.
I’ve been trying to get into SelfHosting, but am finding it quite daunting and difficult.
There is a LOT of stuff that I have to learn, and I am mostly unsure of where to even begin. I know basically nothing about networking.
I need to learn the very basic stuff and work my way up from there, but everything that I’ve seen on the Internet assumes that the reader already has a basic to intermediate understanding of networking and the subjects that surround it. I do not, but I am going to learn.
I just need someone to show me where to start.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
As someone who went through this after trumps 2nd term and power grabs i can give you my process:
Fast forward 6 months: My router is now running OpenWRT. With a few necessary exceptions my network access is always through ProtonVPN. My external devices are connected via wireguard to the router when not on home wifi and only after that reach the www. I have 24/7 access to my services from everywhere. My main server is now an old office mini pc running about 10 services. Im using borg for nightly snapshots(its a bit like apple time machine) and after that everything is backed up to another server at a friends house via rsync and ssh. I have a third mini computer whose purpose is to be my tv’s UI with access to services like the national broadcasts web ui and my own jellyfin and invidious (adless youtube client) The tv does not have an internet connection anymore. I even made a custom land page that automatically opens full screen in a browser when open my tv.
The point is: this builds gradually and you have fun doing it. …until it breaks :D The most painful parts involved networking so you can settle for LAN only at first to keep things simple
how well does invidious work on the TV? how easy are the controls?
I use a small wireless logitech keyboard-mousepad so it works very well. I had to make exceptions in the router for googles video severs to bypass the vpn though.
yeah not all invidiouses allow proxying the video, and at some it used to be off by default
Re-investing in a new platform full of tools (Proton suite) isn’t in my opinion a rational answer. My answer is self host vaultwarden, self host your file storage, and choose between Proton and Tuta for mail, and use your own domain name so you can take your email address with you should you move.
In my opinion No-one should ever store any form of personal data implicitly on someone else’s computer.
Oh i have vaultwarden as well nowadays
When you’re connecting to your local network, say from outside your home, you connect through proton vpn? I’m wanting to self host, but I thought I would have to switch between proton and whatever VPN the local machine is using? Say immich for instance
My phone is on a wireguard tunnel into my router which puts my wireguard vpn in the same forewall zone as my home LAN. Internet access is routed through the tunnel and then through another tunnel to protonvpn and from there to the www. It was a bit elaborate to set up but it works. Wouldnt really recommend the setup for everyone, it was a bit of a pain in the ass to get working. I used Openwrt and policy based routimg plus wireguard for the tunnels into and put of the router.