Guides for self-hosting from a focus on privacy?

I mean, there are plenty of resources/YT channels/etc online that do allow for that kind of tutorial but sometimes they are maybe assuming some skills already, maybe too deep or hard to discover.

Also, most of the time once you picked up on some Docker skills, you can pretty much be on a roll. :sign_of_the_horns:t2:

PewDiePie’s video was a very good introduction and very accessible on that topic.


Haha, been there and hit that wall myself too.

Very good rest of message @kuebic, love the tone + accuracy of it. :light_blue_heart:


I watched the first part and noted that:

  • you need to know that FUTO is a thing, not everybody might have heard of them
  • it’s a very Louis Rossman content, meaning that it is quite rough in terms of packaging with some very nice (opinionated) tutorial but it brings quite some issues to it too:
    • the video is not the most helpful because it shows things without making it readable
    • the written wiki is better but also very long, not very digestable and quite technical
  • the entire thing also requires some basic knowledge of things, just like @yolakalemowa said below, it expects you to be above the average everyday’s person knowledge :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

So just like everything, the knowledge is on the Internet already.
Yet, how it’s packaged is very important: if it’s well explained from the ground up and with proper editing/visuals to explain a bit more in depth what the hell even is a DHCP or how to navigate the terminal.

Don’t get me wrong, the actual content value is of a very good quality and I do love the time + work he put into it, but just like Router Security.org or Wi is Fi are amazing resources for people committed enough to learn more about their routers/WiFi, it might be a hard pill to swallow in terms of learning curve/onboarding.


It is meanwhile also a ton of work to:

  • understand a principle from A to Z
  • take notes and organize ideas to be sure of what you might want to share to an audience later on without making too many mistakes
  • prep an entire filmmaking / editing workflow where you make it entertaining, evergreen and educative while covering most of the principles
There are also other variables now that I think about it šŸ¤”
  • your location, it’s cool to make a tutorial about something but it might just not be available where you live in
  • things change and evolve over time, it’s important to keep stuff up to date and video is definitely not the media to go (and YT channels that flood you with daily content are not making it better, quantity is usually not the solution)
  • probably plenty of other ones I’m forgetting…

It covers a lot of various skills, a lot of time is needed and you might also just be a bad teacher or unfamiliar with the adequate tools. :joy:
But I think that there might still be an audience for such content and that given the political situation of things, it will only go more necessary in the future because (some) people would definitely trade knowledge on how to solve some problem themselves rather than fallback to the simple way of just paying for a product[1].

I’ll try to do that. :sparkling_heart:
No promise to succeed here haha :sweat_smile: but I’ll try to push that movement in 2026 because it matters a lot to me and lots of people could use some of that knowledge for their own stuff too.
It’s quite a wonderful hobby that solves real needs and the ownership part of it is just cherry on top of the cake. :cherries:


  1. that might just enshittify in the long term given enough time/success ā†©ļøŽ

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Some community wiki suggestions:

  • ideal defaults for docker containers
  • Dealing w/ Docker punching a hole through firewall
  • nftables solutions for common setups (for example limiting to LAN-only)
  • Whether to use docker hardened images

For me, I’m transitioning to rootless podman orchestrated through systemd. I don’t want to deal with Docker punching holes in the firewall at all, and I don’t want to handle a container escape from a root container. I believe you can do rootless Docker, but Podman was built to be daemonless and rootless in mind. It’s a different learning curve, but I feel better with more secure defaults.

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Agreed and also how I do think, I skipped Docker entirely.
Meanwhile, I could still learn a few things about hardened images for sure.

I like that the systemd integration builds a skillset that can be leveraged to harden/automate across all Linux distributions. On top of that, Podman is also a better company than Docker. With that said, it seems like quite a steep transition that isn’t as plug-and-play as I’d hoped:

AFAICS, the steps to replicate my docker-compose setup
  • learn the quirks of podman-compose
  • learn about quadlets
  • track down default/unnamed docker volumes and move them for podman
  • read up on how podman tackles networks so that Zoraxy (reverse-proxy) can continue to connect to all other apps for DNS rewrite/.lan resolutions w/ self-signed certs
  • troubleshoot things that break across each of those steps
  • Repeat x15 to migrate all containers

what are yalls opinions on using docker hardened images from a privacy perspective? it should have better security, but requires auth/docker acc so docker knows exactly what you are using

To add to the discussion, here are some pointers based on my own experience self-hosting everything from Home Assistant to email:

  • Open source software, only.
  • Don’t bother with Proxmox/nested virtualization.
  • Most services you will want to run, especially as a newbie, are available as turnkey Docker/Podman images.
  • Running services bare metal does make sense sometimes, do not be afraid of it. (Think DNS, Wireguard, some types of game servers.)
  • A fixed public IP, preferably v4, is very good thing to have if you are going to take self hosting seriously and it makes things at lot easier.
  • Keep things simple: do you really need more than a plain Samba server for files? (I don’t.)

Hmmm, I don’t think blanket statements can be made like that. Hypervisor solutions have their place, even if it’s not for your use case.

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