For this new year, I’d like to learn the skills necessary to self host. Specifically, I would like to eventually be able to self host Nextcloud, Jellyfin and possibly my email server too.

I’ve have a basic level understanding of Python and Kotlin. Now I’m in the process of learning Linux through a virtual machine because I know Linux is better suited for self hosting.

Should I stick with Python? Or is JavaScript (or maybe Ruby) better suited for that purpose? I’m more than happy to learn a new language, but I’m unsure on which is better suited.

And if you could start again in your self hosting journey, what would you do differently? :)

EDIT: I wasn’t expecting all these wonderful replies. You’re all very kind people to share so much with me :)

The consensus seems to be that hosting your own email server might be a lot, so I might leave that as future project. But for Nextcloud and Jellyfin I saw a lot of great tips! I forgot to mention that ideally I would like to have Nextcloud available for multiple users (ie. family memebers) so indeed learning some basic networking/firewalling seems the bare minimum.

I also promise that I will carefully read the manuals!

  • dontblinkEnglish
    4·
    7 hours ago

    Enough focus to read documentation.

    That’s really it. If your purpose is just self hosting learning bash could also be helpful. And yeah Linux would be a great choice.

    But mostly, if you want to self host an instance of Nextcloud correctly and without having to deal with too many unexpected things, you have to read the documentation and do not rush. Most self hosted stuff isn’t “install and use”, because you’ll be your own server manager, and everything requires attention to be managed.

    Docker or not docker you will have to deal with configuration, settings, requirements and updates.

    So understanding how to read the docs/search and open github issues and taking time to read everything would be the most important skill for me.

    Also writing down what you are doing would indeed be helpful too, in order not to lose track of what you’re doing on your server. (Check out Ansible).

    Most apps out there simply need you to know about permissions, systemctl services and package managers.

    Try to always find a specific package for your distro for everything you install (eg. .deb for Debian), and have strategies when this is not possible (aka using a Python venv when installing python programs).