The Goal behind Selfhosting

Self-hosting is the approach to be independent from big corporations in your digital life. I think that this is important because depending on some for-profit external company to provide you services and tools on which our today's life depends so much is risky. Leaving aside privacy considerations (which you shouldn't, just saying) it can lead to a few more issues like vendor lock-in (where you are forced to keep purchasing devices from the same brand/type or you lose years of photos/mails/apps…), exploitation and enshittification (whatever that means today).

Frankly, we are used to have those services “for free”, but what if Google or Apple put a pricey price tag? What will you do? (and it is already happening, anybody remembers how Google Photos started?)

What will you do when those free services will start pushing ads even more down your throat? When you will not be able to understand if an e-mail is legit or pushed ad? Or when to login-in in your phone or share a contact with a friend you will be forced to watch an ad first? Remember how You Tube used to be nice and accessible, but now you need to watch endless ads before and during some video which is supposedly free? Have you ever used a phone from some manufacturers like XIAOMI with ads in settings pages? Well…

The answer is complex, as any good answer needs to match the problem complexity, i tend to avoid any smartpants telling me a simple solution is available to a coimplex problem: that person is either forcing his agenda on me, or trying to trick me into something which is not so good for me.

So, basically self hosting is gaining back control on your life and be independent, not a slave, to the real big powers of today's digital world. Oh, and having fun too, or i would say, first and foremost.

Self-Hosting is possible, might be less difficult than you expect, and indeed can be fun. Will this be too much for yourself? I don't know, but i don't think so, provided that you have the determination to learn new stuff and the patience to work with the occasional frustration.

I had/have tons of fun learning new stuff and sometimes drowning in the vast ocean of free-hosting tools and stuff that's out there for you to try. You will have to draw lines, give yourself limits and expect a learning curve and a lot of experimentation.

What i will present in these pages are the endpoints of my journey, where i reached endpoints, and the current in-progress activities: i tried and experimented (and i still do) a lot, the pages will reflect it.

This is not meant to be complete nor correct, its a journey in progress which i share with you (and, to be honest, also not to forget myself what i did in case i need to redo it again).

Getting free from big tech is not an easy task and probably cannot even be truly achieved without sacrifice. The objective here is to not make sacrifices for as much as possible.

/start: mobile devices note…

I will not cover how to free yourself from google or your phone vendor's Android (of course, Apple ecosystem is so far from freedom that i will not even mention it). You can learn about LineageOS and other custom-roms for Android and try to load them on your phone/tablet/android device, you can learn about MicroG to get rid of the pervasive Google's services, but it is outside the scope of these pages.

Everything i will cover can be applied on top of whatever Android phone you already use without the need to modify it.

/end: …mobile devices note

These pages will cover your home setup, where i expect that all your data will be stored. I also assume this home setup will be stored in a private place, so not on some rented metal or virtual machine on the public internet, because where you store your data is as important as who manages it, and i am not impressed by the idea of cloud storing in encrypted format: all your data will still be at the mercy of your storage provider physical and IT-security, and of course subject to data leaks, decryption and resell / abuse, and even plain and simple removal without notice. If any of that should happen, it must be for my own errors in securing my stuff rather some cutbacks or malevolence from somebody else.

So, what is that i aim at securing on my own premises?

• Contacts: all my contacts data, address books.
• Calendars: all my appointments and memos.
• Files and personal documents: ID's scans, medical files, tax related documents…
• Photos: my family's photos, old scanned photos and any photos i take with my phone…
• Notes: store, manage and access your personal notes.
• Smart Home: access lights, heating, controls the smart home directly.
• Media Collection: store, manage and access my legally owned media collection (music, videos, books…)

What i will not cover is e-mail management, because this is a totally bigger beast that i think cannot be managed by self-hosting at home. It can be, and i do, managed by yourself but you will definitely need a physical server on the internet and it can be much more complex and risk-full. Also, you cannot definitely self-host/self-manage any kind of certified email.