I assume most users here have some sort of tech/IT/software background. However, I've seen some comments of people who might not have that background (no problem with that) and I wonder if you are self-hosting anything, how did you decide that you would like to self-host?
I'm a college professor in the humanities (religious studies, history). Got into linux about 5 years back, partly because it comports better with my lefty politics than the alternatives, but also just because I've long been a closet computer nerd. I currently run a couple of proxmox servers on old optiplexes I grabbed off ebay. Full *arr stack with jellyfin on docker, a Tails VM for TOR stuff, NAS (omv on a vm), some other dockerized stuff: linkding, radicale, alexandrite (a self-hosted lemmy client, which I'm currently writing this on), various backup utilities.
It's basically just a hobby for me, though the switch to linux has also totally changed my academic workflow, e.g. I do all my writing in nvim + latex now, use syncthing to sync my home desktop, laptops, and office computer, etc. I dig divesting myself from corporate computing to the greatest extent possible, appreciate the privacy benefits, and generally just enjoy the community-driven spirit of the whole thing.
Former USAF JAG here (lawyer). I was always a tech geek, undergrad major was in MIS actually, but I didn't enjoy coding. Always ran Plex on the side, built my own computers, etc. Grew up with my Dad using Linux everywhere (I found this annoying as I just wanted to play games on Windows).
I didn't enjoy law (surprise!). I was disillusioned with the criminal justice system too. Quit the law in 2020. Then suddenly had quality time by global happenstance to rethink my life path.
I work in IT now. Restarted at the bottom of a new career but I'm in deep nerd territory now - Proxmox servers, Home Assistant, networks with VLANs, OPNsense router, 22U server rack, Linux as my daily driver, etc.
As someone who majored in CS and is now in a software engineering position, the people in tech who come from a completely different field are always my favorite. On top of just proving people wrong about the "right" way to get into the field, they've been around, they know how to think about problems from other perspectives, and they're usually better at working with other people.
Honestly, I think more people should minor in CS, or if they did their undergrad in CS, they should have to do their grad work in something else. The ability to compute things is only useful if you're well versed in a problem worth computing an answer to, most of which lie outside of CS.
I'm currently doing comp sci but have always debated doing comp eng or ee. However, I don't want to do comp eng or ee as a career, just more as a side hobby. So I'm sticking with comp sci and I'll do all the comp eng and ee stuff at home.
I'm a farmer that was an IT guy a decade or so ago, which I guess is a background in it, but that's not why I do it. Self-hosting is a self-reliance thing. I like to fix my own equipment, metal and silicon.
When it comes apart, I want to know the reason, and I like to invent new ways to do things, which means I have to be able to control my infrastructure.
No background but I can read and listen. There are plenty of resources around.
I started out of privacy concerns and I wanted to deGoogle It started this year with a RPI and pihole.
Then I saw Mealie, bought a domain, and started sharing recipes with my family.
At first I messed around with Casa OS. It's like a gateway drug. So easy to use and get stuff running.
Last week a 2nd hand i5 arrived and now I moved everything to proxmox. The RPI is still running pihole. At the moment I'm setting up Immich and I'm thinking about buying a NAS.
Since it is a new hobby I keep everything low cost. If it sticks I'll invest in a proper home server.
De-Googling was what got me started as well. Wanted to be able to have my own Google Drive clone with Nextcloud. From there it was just one little improvement / additional service at a time as I learned to use Linux and docker. Now I run a Linux laptop and am considering an android phone.
I'm just an idiot that tinkers with things. I've got a TrueNAS Scale system up and running as network storage and Plex storage. There's about 44TB of raw capacity in there right now, connected via a server SAS card. I just follow tutorials if I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
Am also an idiot. I have several raspberry pis and UPS boards mostly operating on hopes and dreams, and the most useful things I do are a single-user nextcloud instance that's even accessible over the Internet, and a smb drive that's always accessible
When they were installing the alarm at my house I noticed that the main guy had nextcloud on his phone and it sparked a nice conversation about privacy. He has no technical background but managed to self-host it on his old laptop with one of those distros that have an easy UI for self-hosting (don't remember which one exactly). He's a pretty cool guy.
My father in law was a commercial pilot and he had a home server just to keep photos and travel writing while he was flying and away from home a lot. I helped him upgrade some of that to the cloud, since that makes for sense when on the other side of the country, but he still has a bunch of stuff at home.
Former attorney who now consults for corporate compliance departments/programs. I have zero formal training or professional practical experience, but tech has always been my strongest hobby. I decided to self host as much as possible almost 20 years ago starting with media libraries and email; it stemmed from a deep distrust of the tech industry.
I don't have a tech background. Currently hosting 25 different things in docker. I wonder if there are actually more non-tech people who do it, because tech industry people might want to take a break in their off time.
I work in logistics. I've always had a fascination with tech, and was leery of all these neato things on offer from big tech, from social media to the cloud.
yes! structural engineer here, computers has been my passion for a long time and self hosting is a joy! i have learnt a ton in the past year about networking, security and so many things!
Medical device engineer here (mechanical engineering). I host jellyfin, game servers (Minecraft, factorio, valheim, etc), my website, and a bunch of other minor services I find useful.
I got into it originally through a combination of poor internet, and being fed up with Google and others discontinuing products/features. The internet problem is solved now, so my only goal is not being reliant on someone else's cloud.
I've never been in tech professionally, I'm a truck driver (now working in the office of company but still drive sometimes) but I have always been into tech. I selfhost as much as possible. Bitwarden, jellyfin, seafile, etc. and also run a Lemmy instance. I like tech projects and control.
Self hosting is your pathway to a tech background.
University for comp sci, in my experience around the space, is a complete waste of time. Just a piece of paper that may or may not equip the recipient with some skills that may or may not be relevant.
University is ok if you're starting at zero and don't even know what's out there. It's for exposing students to a a breadth of topics and some rationale of why things are as they are, but not necessarily for plugging them into a production environment.
Nothing beats having your own real world project, either for motivation or exposure to cutting edge methods. Universities have tried to replicate that with things like 'problem based learning,' and they probably hope that students will be inspired by one or two of the classes to start their own out-of-class project, but school and work are fundamentally different ways of learning with fundamentally different goals.
Mechanical engineer here self-hosting my own Lemmy and Pixelfed instances in a Yunohost VM on an old Ubuntu box. It just feels better being my own admin.
I clean construction site toilets. I wanted to run my own game and media severs and ended up with a Dell Poweredge, a synology 1u NAS and some ubiquity gear
I have no tech background, and I am just getting into creating a media server. I started with an old secondhand Synology NAS, which developed a power issue within a month and no chance of returning it or getting it covered by warranty.
My current plan is to get another Synology NAS (new with extended warranty this time), along with a spare HDD enclosure so I can have an extra layer of redundancy, finally set up Jellyfin, and then I want to build a Pihole. At that point I won't need much more self hosting or networking tricks until further notice.
I work in emergency management but I've always been interested in tech as a hobby. That led me to start self-hosting Plex on my desktop about 6-7 years ago. Now I've got a dedicated machine running unraid with about 20 to 30 different docker services.
I really enjoy being able to figure out how to setup a service and then being able to be fully in control of how it works. Beyond just enjoying tinkering with the system to learn, I enjoy being able to troubleshoot and fix problems without relying on large companies.
Programming and self hosting the results when I was ~14 is what led me to a tech background. No university, but I've been working professionally in both IT and software for over a decade and self hosting even longer.
Non-tech. I decided to self host first to send media to my TV. I wanted an always-on solid state hard drive computer that didn’t have to do any transcoding. Tried DLNA but Emby just worked better. Jellyfin didn’t have an LG App at the time so I’m still using Emby. Eventually I also asked my poor ARM server with 2 GB of RAM to also run my wireless access points, but the Omada software is a resource hog. So I have a little Intel machine that can do Omada better and also transcoding for Emby on the go. And then I learned about HomeBridge and that’s been great too. I think together the two computers run about 15W of energy I could decommission the ARM one but it does a couple things I haven’t migrated yet. I’ve tried hosting other stuff but those are the main ones used every day.
Kinda? My bare bones initial self hosted media streaming setup was put together by my partner. It's no longer bare bones, because I've since upgraded it, added new functionality and I keep it going.
I work in retail, but my homelab isn't super extensive just a nas, a Plex server, and a couple proxmox boxes.
Closet I've ever come to being in IT was back when I was still in college and took some a networking class and some web development classes but that was many moons ago.
Started with running a minecraft realm then it grew to the point greifers became a problem so we needed plug-ins for protection. So that led to having a managed hosted server then a VPS and then finally self hosting
It was self-fulfilling for me. I started self-hosting and messing with networking before I went into IT. I thought I’d be in a very different field until ~10 years ago.
I don't work in IT/Tech at all, but I've been an enthusiast since I was young, at first piggybacking off of my dad, then developing my own interests as I got into high school and college. I started self-hosting because I found it interesting and as time progressed I saw the benefits of operating things locally. I only host things within my own network though, because I'm not yet comfortable with how to safely set up external access.
Psychologist by training, production planner by trade. I started using Linux around 15 years ago on my laptop. My self hosted journey started with a Chromecast plugged in a TV and I would cast file from my laptop. Fed up on how laggy and buggy the set up was I installed Kodi on my laptop. Then, I bought a SBC and a few years later a refurbished NUC for few bucks.
I now selfhost around 10 services but nothing too complex (jellyfin, grocy, paperless, etc). I know how to set up a docker image and thinker a bit with config files but I rely heavily on guides for tasks more complex than that. There are a few services that I would like to setup but as I get older I get less joy from setting up a system than using it and the hours I can invest on this are unfortunately limited.
I don't work in IT at all. My self hosting journey started when I got sick of feeling powerless in the face of big tech companies who are increasingly ripping off customers or violating their right to privacy. There's also the general mistrust that comes from my data being repeatedly breached or leaked because share holder profits are more important than investing in basic security.
Sound designer here. I always liked to tinker with digital stuff, and while I think %90 of the self hosted apps must’ve been simple .EXEs, I’m having fun setting them up around.
I work warehousing; no IT background, I just like to tinker with whatever. Have since I started breathing.
I was a fairly casual pirate, grabbing movies/shows I couldn't find elsewhere (or just couldn't afford). Got into Plex/Emby for my first real exploration into self-hosting (if you don't count SRCDS and/or Minecraft Server at like 13yo); and expanded my knowledge from there. Reverse Proxys, the 'arrs', DNS, Docker, VPNs, etc.
Now a days, I've got 20+ services that I mostly access via a VPN I host, and I'm always interested in messing with new things :)
I'm "techy", but not in a tech career. By that I mean I've always been casually interested in tech, and enjoy building my own PCs, and am usually the one people come to for tech help, even if I just end up googling it for them haha.
Got into hosting through Home Assistant and Foundry VTT.
You don't have to have a technical background though.
Anyone from any background could learn it if they wanted too. A technical background obviously helps though.