Selfhosted

I would personally recommend starting with a Pi-hole. It's easy to set up and provides an immediate improvement to your whole internet experience.

Try to follow the official guide or use a Docker container.

Documentation, take notes on what you setup, ports opened, accounts created. This will be very valuable when you envitally get services setup and forget about them.

Judging from your comments, you seem to be lacking some basic knowledge and skills to get started.

None of the comments here are useful without getting those up to speed.

You definitely might want to start of looking into networking: how do computers connect to each other and the internet.

Since you're using Linux Mint, I do assume you have some basic knowledge of using the terminal and basic commands.

Next you might want to learn Docker, which is useful when learning self-hosting, as most solutions will have an option to use that.

Going by your comments, I think you need to know a few basics before you get into people's suggestions for actual services. Start with this: more or less, "the cloud" is just someone else's computer. It's bigger, the connection is faster, etc., but the services you use most likely run on a Linux computer much like the one you already have.

For experimenting with the topic, it would be good to have another computer that you can mess around with and not worry about having a usable machine. If you can cobble together a desktop from old parts it will be enough to start the learning process.

KDE connect and/or Synching/Syncthing-fork.

I don't think you're ready for self-hosting, but getting these installed and sorted out will help you move along that path, plus it will meet your needs in the mean time.

Bit, as others have suggested, get familiar with networking a bit.

You might want to get a raspberry pi or cheap SBC with a good amount of memory and disk space, and fuck around for a bit, trying some things.

Take this anyway you want but one good thing about ai is they've hoovered up all the guides, instruction manuals, and troubleshooting forums. They can give you advice, help you install, and troubleshoot when it breaks.

Buy a PC, install debian, install tailscale, install immich. Done.

This is kind of an info dump and I havent fully gone through to verify everything but this is a guide from a trusted ytber explaining step by step how he setup and managed his self hosting environment.

https://wiki.futo.org/index.php/Introduction_to_a_Self_Managed_Life:_a_13_hour_%26_28_minute_presentation_by_FUTO_software

For a more bite sized entry into self hosting just join the community (like you are now) and learn about the different services people are hosting and when one sounds good then look into how to set it up and ask questions along the way.

Get yourself the cheapest n150 box you can, the 4 port versions are good im case you decise to upgade and convert it to a fw later. Get a 4tb 2.5 ssd if you afford it and a chewp dual or more jbod external for safe backups.

Every year upgrade and stick to proxmox and opnsnese untill/unless you have reason otherwise.

This was just posted https://itsfoss.com/self-hosting-starting-projects/

If you really want to self host but you aren't interested in a lot of dirty work then you can get a Synology and use Synology photos, right next to Synology drive ( Google Drive substitute) and everything else substitute.

It "just works" and it handles all of the updates/security for me. Even includes secure enough access via quickconnect so I can connect over the Internet.

That said it costs more than diy, and I have hardware limits. I can't just get 2 more drives and hook them up. I have a 2 bay Synology so I would need a whole new unit to get 2 more bays. It's better for me to just buy bigger drives.

Software wise - if it isn't in the Anyone App Store then you can just use docker so it covers everything.

But as someone who is already busy enough with a full time tech job and 2 kids. This solution works for me

@Toasted_Breakfast How aboit starting with something like #yunohost

Buy used enterprise hardware for cheap, install Unraid, dip your toes in... Then if you enjoy tinkering, evolve from there.

Unraid does everything I want so I've kinda plateaued for the moment.

One option you could explore since you didn't list any other equipment, is a cheap VPS. You can pick one up at LowEndBox for cheap. I have a couple VPS test servers that run about $25 a year. That would help you get your feet wet a bit. You could learn how to deploy Linux server along with the standard defense systems in place like Fail2Ban, UFW, etc.

Or even a small NUC or RPi.

for "photo storage backup", you can simply use syncthing.

unless you want to really learn to "self host"

Immich is a fantastic photo backup service that is a replacement for Google Photos both in form and function.

There's a demo at demo.immich.app to see what it looks like and what you can do with it. As far as self hosting stuff goes it's relatively easy to setup. Work through the setup guide and see if you can understand that to get it running.

What it will do is make it available on any devices on your local (WiFi or wired) network. You will need to open a port on the Linux box's firewall, but that step is easy and I can show you how to do that on Mint. Then you'll be able to connect to it from your phone or any other devices (or right from a browser right on the server).

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I have a few things running on a Mint server I have.

Well for starters if you want something more out-of-the box, just buy a NAS. But what woult be better is to buy a Raspberry Pi 5 and add a micro sd with good amount of storage or maybe some additional external storage and install CasaOS(this is basically a easy UI that allows you to self-host mostly without commands) and install Immich within its App Store, and link it up with your phone(on the Immich app).(If you need any more help DM)

If you are interested in the photo storage then start..... With the storage.

So pick up a nas or something similar, pay a bit more for the super intuitive fancy gui product and the start from there.

Learn what is nas and how to connect to a pc Thne learn how to do the same with your smartphone Then learn a bit about networking Then... Continuous for the hardest itch and try to Scratch it

And if you need support, come back here, check videos and web pages or even chatgpt, for the basic stuff is quite acceptable