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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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People may not like the idea of what I'm about to say but here's a thought from someone who also found self hosting to be overwhelming at first and now self hosts everything but email. The learning curve is flatter than you probably imagine it to be if you are doing normal things with mostly default settings. I recommend docker containers to start. Find something you want to host and just follow the directions in the man pages. You might not understand everything initially but you'll quickly pick it up as you change the handful of variables in a docker compose file to fit your setup. It will also help you get used to how to structure your files and folders in a way that makes things flow easier. Everything in docker can be done in the terminal which also takes away a layer of complexity.
I moved to Linux a while back and only discovered docker after setting everything up. Haven't got around to learning about it yet, Linux itself was a lot of info lol. Do you use docker containers for like every app you install? Like if I start with an old laptop and try syncthing, should that be installed in a docker container?
I use it for every server app I install. Mainly because it easier to migrate applications between machines. Docker gives you a consistent build environment so you don't have to worry about having 12 versions of Python installed and they are all wrong and then when you find the right one it breaks something else (this was never a common problem for me but it is annoying when it happens.) So, using docker-compose (recommended over cli commands because you can see all in one place what everything does and where it goes) you just edit the compose file to fit your scenario and build it. It is pretty easy and fast. When and if you decide you want everything accessible from the Internet you can read a few guides and knock it out in an afternoon. The reverse proxies can also be run as containers. Here's the page for the sync thing container. To use it, install docker, create the folders the container calls for, edit the compose file as necessary, go to the folder the compose file is located in and run docker compose up -d and your build will start