December 12, 2025, 6:22pm 1

I swear, I need to learn how to self host. If only there was a place online that could teach & guide you how to do so from a focus on privacy and digital freedoms.

3 Likes

JG December 12, 2025, 8:51pm 2

Yeah, I know there is plenty of stuff online. But I am an absolute beginner when it comes to self hosting. So, even watching how to set up TrueNAS, I won’t still learn how to do it. No guide is made for an absolute beginner. Imagine teaching your boomer parent to install and set up desktop Linux over the phone. That’s how bad I am with understanding stuff about this.

Yes. I know its about this. I just don’t know how to do it…

kissu December 12, 2025, 8:57pm 3

Start small aka absolutely not with TrueNAS. How about something as simple as a quick and dirty website with a “hello world on it”? Then you could try PiHole? Or maybe Uptime Kuma?

If you run Linux and can navigate a few directories with cd, use ls etc, it’s good enough for a start. If not, take a quick crash course on Bash. Then you can move forward into playing around with Fedora or whatever would be your favorite Linux distro.

If you’re on Windows or MacOS, you can probably access a bash shell quite easily too. Linux is not mandatory, yet very advised to fully embrace the environment and understand how it truly works. I’m saying that because I know quite a lot of people that are thinking that they do understand Linux while they never daily-drove it themselves besides soy-late MacOS experience.

1 Like

JG December 12, 2025, 8:59pm 4

Yes, this I can do.

I’ll give it a try again, I gave up on learning about this after having messed up many times. I have a spare mini PC so I guess I can give it a try again.

I do know how to use desktop Linux. I use Fedora (workstation and atomic).

–

Thanks for the guidance (though I am a structured learner who prefers to follow clear instructions written as ELI5 if at all possible).

kissu December 12, 2025, 9:06pm 5

You can also try a virtual box or alike if you want a “danger-free” zone where you can rollback easily.

Don’t give up!

Otherwise yes, a mini PC is also quite practical and more boots on the field rather than just abstract software theory. Thing is, with Linux and self-hosting there will never be an ELI5 kind of setup because it depends heavily on your config/preferences and…most of the time you can figure it out anyway by reading the errors/docs.

I wouldn’t recommend LLMs for learning, but hey if it helps maybe good enough to get over some boilerplate code? It’s meant to be dirty, so embrace it.

If you want some structure, you can start there maybe but…don’t get stuck into tutorial hell. It’s one thing to watch, it’s another to actually do the troubleshooting and setup yourself. You’ll learn far more by actively learning rather than casually copy-pasting/binge watching someone do the hard work for you.

1 Like

JG December 12, 2025, 9:08pm 6

Thank you again. I’ll give it another honest shot soon. I’ll have some time during the holidays coming up.

kissu December 12, 2025, 9:09pm 7

Keep us updated on your progress. If I see you post here too much, I’ll come and remind you to go back to practice.

2 Likes

JG December 12, 2025, 9:12pm 8

I probably will come back with follow ups when I’m really stuck. My self hosting needs are not too much: hosting my media and a few other apps that can relatively easily be self hosted.

1 Like

HauntSanctuary (Privacy is Undead) December 13, 2025, 2:41am 9

The community at forum.level1techs.com have been invaluable to me.

They have the guides in the forums, and some are outdated though but people will update it (eventually) if you request for an update.

GorujoCY December 13, 2025, 7:14am 10

The level1techs forum is a decent solution

I would also think we already have but I could make a generalized guide on Privacy Guides if there is a demand

Why…? This scares me lol.

HauntSanctuary (Privacy is Undead) December 14, 2025, 11:36pm 12

You can, its just that TrueNAS has a lot of nuances to it, like you needing an Intel NIC. You can learn TrueNAS but I wouldnt put critical stuff to it as a beginner.

I did put critical things in it and lost data only because I didn’t know what I really needed to do. Somehow I know I am not doing things 100% right but it is probably good enough.

TrueNAS works beautifully as a NAS but I am not there because I want a beautiful NAS, I wanted a server appliance that I can put apps on it.