UPDATE: To everyone who suggested YUNO, thank you so much. This seems like it is about to make my journey much easier. It is basically almost exactly what I was looking for, but I was unaware that it existed.
Thank you ALL for your suggestions, actually. It’s a bit overwhelming for an almost complete noobie but I an going to look into all of the suggestions in time. I just saw that there were several mentions of YUNO so I decided to make that one of the first things I investigated.
So, about two months ago, I had a very eye opening experience. As the result of a single misconfigured security setting on my Android, I was locked out of my Google Account on my phone AND all of my PCs. I had no access whatsoever to Google, or any of the literally hundreds of services that I get through Google.
This is when I realized that I relied entirely on Google/Android because those two days were actually very difficult, being cut off from media, services, passwords, everything, from the past almost twenty years of my life, could be taken away from me in an instant. The decades of my life that were locked away in my Google Account included hundreds of thousands of pictures, almost a hundred thousand audio tracks, several hundred books, several hundred apps, thousands of videos, etc. ad infinitum. Unfortunately, very little of this material was backed up at that point. That is my fault. Also, the misconfigured security setting was my fault as well.
The amount of data, media, memories, services, etc. that would have been lost is actually endless and it would have affected my life in several ridiculously negative ways.
Luckily, in the end, I was able to get my access back and then basically immediately grabbed all of the several terabytes of information and media of mine that they had, and that I was almost locked out of. I have it all in my house now on a drive in my computer, with a backup made on another disconnected disk.
I then decided that no corporation was ever going to have such an insanely high level of influence on and control over my entire life and my media ever again. That experience was actually very scary.
I’ve been trying to get into SelfHosting, but am finding it quite daunting and difficult.
There is a LOT of stuff that I have to learn, and I am mostly unsure of where to even begin. I know basically nothing about networking.
I need to learn the very basic stuff and work my way up from there, but everything that I’ve seen on the Internet assumes that the reader already has a basic to intermediate understanding of networking and the subjects that surround it. I do not, but I am going to learn.
I just need someone to show me where to start.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Honestly? Don’t do the whole switch, or even a big switch from a few services to another.
Start small. Very small. Try doing just one service you rely on, like your images or music. Immich just announced their first stable release. I use navidrome for my music. Make sure to test these on a copy of your data, not your actual data.
Once you’ve got one service working as you want it to do, then you can try your hand at another service. This way, you don’t get stuck trying to do everything all at once.
It may be worth considering how much (if any) you want to spend at the start, too. That’ll inform your next immediate task; setting up basic backups for your data. A spare drive is a good start, but it may be worth keeping another one at your parents house, or similar.
That is exactly my plan, to have this set as a long term goal with several incremental micro-goals, as opposed to attempting to do it all in a weekend. I figure making it a long term thing gives me much more of a chance to actually learn what it is that I am doing. Plus, at my level (no real networking knowledge to speak of) trying to do this in a weekend sounds like a nightmare, lol.
An “I Wish I Had …” addition to this: maybe start something like Wiki.js or Joplin that you will then use to document what you do as you go. Keep a record of your process so that you can work your way back if you need.
Great suggestion! I will definitely implement something like that.