I’m an English teacher who wanted to “cut the cord” wherever I could, so I started learning about domain hosts, containerization, .yaml files, etc.

Since then, I’ve been hosting several pods for file sharing and streaming for many years, and I’m currently thinking about learning kubernetes for home deployment. But why?

If you aren’t in development, IT, cyber security, or in a related profession, what made you want to learn this on your own? What made you want to pick this up as a hobby?

  • fizzle@quokk.au
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    33 minutes ago

    Piracy, basically.

    Self-hosting wasn’t my intention, I just wanted a media server. Then a media server that downloaded all my stuff easily. Then a server that was more accessible. Then a server that had better Wife-Approval-Factor.

  • Eirikr70@jlai.lu
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    3 minutes ago

    I couldn’t think about leaving my personal data to the Big Tech…

  • B0rax@feddit.org
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    2 hours ago

    Well… I bought a Philips hue starter set. And I had heard of mqtt, zigbee and pihole. And I had a spare raspberry pi.

    Now that got out of hand and I am looking at a proxmox cluster….

  • cenotaph@piefed.zip
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    1 hour ago

    I reached a breaking point with the number of SaaS that I was having to pay for monthly, so I started taking steps to eliminate my subscriptions one by one

  • Toga65@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    -Cable is insanity. It’s companies are corrupt and awful.

    -Watching sports is a maze of what channel/TV package/subscription service did I need again?

    -Far fewer means of owning the media today means they can jack up the price as much as they want. Fuck that.

  • Willoughby@piefed.world
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    4 hours ago

    I’m a mechanic.

    This is both my reason and explanation lol.

    I do my own work has been said to be taken a bit too literally in my case. I got ripped off by Geek Squad when I was 18 and said “wow, it’s just like getting ripped off at a shitty mechanic shop” and ever since then it’s been all hands-on.

    career

    I sat on that fence but being a mechanic gives me guaranteed work and I basically work-out every day. It’s hard, but not brutal and the pay is decent. Surrounded by maga tho.

    • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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      2 hours ago

      I’m a web developer and whenever I see my (awesome) mechanic I always wonder what it’s like on the “other side.”My dad was a mechanic when I was a child and I always regret never picking up those skills.

      A lot of times when they run me through their problem-solving I’m like “damn, that’s just like reproducing a bug to find its root cause.”

      • Willoughby@piefed.world
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        12 minutes ago

        Yes, but also factor in information in the mechanic space has no FOSS comparison. Some companies put out their official service manuals after a period of time but most charge your company out the ass to let you view everything in some proprietary walled garden. Troubleshooting a mechanical fault can be very similar to troubleshooting code or software, and sometimes it literally is a vehicle’s software, and out comes a laptop.

        “What field am I in, again?”

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Lemmy has been a big part of it.

    I’ve never been fond of paying big tech to spy on me. It has been getting gradually more expensive and more intrusive for years. Around the time I reached a breaking point, folks here helped me realize that digital sovereignty is possible.

    One day I was just like, “Why does Google need to know when my lightswich is on?” And that was the start of it.

  • undrwater@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I’m a social worker by background. It all started with running Linux on my desktop.

    From there, the possibilities seemed endless.

  • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I’ve been a media hoarder for decades, my partner is an avid dvd collector. I used to have lofty goals with friends about setting up our own server and media centers so we didn’t have to afford the world we live in. The friends fell off along the way, but I finally managed to make the dream happen. It’s bittersweet that I don’t really have anyone to celebrate it with.

    • muxika@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 hours ago

      Sorry to hear. On the upside, no one will be upset when the server goes down.

  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
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    3 hours ago

    Linux initially, giving way for me to see that the best alternatives to me are generally the ones I control.

    And considering geopolitics, where I can see how dangerous a well-positioned spy/saboteur/paid actor can be, my next self host project is some ActivityPub social media, at least as an one-user instance since I don’t want to act as a company yet, so I have control of where I’m posting from too.

  • Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 hours ago

    I’m not in a tech field now, but I used to be. I jumped ship when everything started moving to ‘cloud based’ because I don’t trust anything I can’t kick when it breaks.