A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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The learning curve might be a little high in some regards, but you may want to try NixOS. There are quite a few services ready to enable and customize for self-hosting, and the design makes updating packages fairly simple.
To be clear, NixOS is not a "simple" solution, but it does work well for self hosting.
Windows Server 2022
If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.
You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.
Generally, Linux Servers are best administered from a command line. At least in the beginning to set everything up. In turn they are faster on lower hardware as they dont even have a graphical desktop at all so need less resources. You could of course install a windows server OS. They can be fully administered through Remote Desktop and a GUI.
There are multiple projects to make self hosting more accessible (like casaOS). They automate many steps of the setup and then offer you a webUI for further steps. Maybe have a look here https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#self-hosting-solutions
Woah, there's a lot. Nice that there's plenty of options!
I run my home media server ( and intel NUC i5, so nothing super powerful) running Ubuntu with CasaOS.
There's tons of you tube videos to help with CasaOS for self hosting and not just the media side.
I think I only used the terminal to install CasaOS the rest is done from the web gui
Almost all of selfhosting is editing config files, setting permissions and starting/stopping services.
Setting it up so you can administer a server by desktop is probably as hard as learning how to edit config files from a terminal. Maybe harder.
I can recommend you Debian, since it's the "default" for many servers and has a lot of documentation and an extremely big userbase.
For web interfaces, I can recommend you, as you already mentioned, CasaOS and Cockpit.
I used CasaOS in the beginning and liked it, but nowadays, I mostly use Cockpit, where I have the feeling that it integrates the host system more, and allows me to do most of my maintenance (updating, etc.) quite easily.
CasaOS is more aesthetic imo, and allows you to install docker containers graphically, which is better for beginners.
I personally do my docker stuff mostly via CLI (docker compose file) nowadays, because I find it more straightforward, but the configuration CasaOS offers is easier to understand and has nice defaults
I ended up installing Debian since Yunohost can't install and my old laptop doesn't meet the hardware requirements of TrueNAS Scale
By the way, you can still run the Yunohost installer ontop of your Debian install... If you want to... It's Debian-based anyway so it doesn't really matter if you use its own install media or use the script on an existing Debian install. Though I feel like adding: If you're looking for Docker... Yunohost might not be your best choice. It's made to take control itself and it doesn't use containers. Of course you can circumvent that and add Docker containers nonetheless... But that isn't really the point and you'd end up dealing with the underlying Debian and just making it more complicated.
It is a very good solution if you don't want to deal with the CLI. But it stops being useful once you want too much customization, or unpackaged apps. At least that's my experience. But that's kind of always the case. Simpler and more things automatically and pre-configured, means less customizability (or more effort to actually customize it).
YUNOHost iso is basically just Debian, but the one-click-install for various self-hosted things is it's primary purpose. All done through web interface.
don't go with server variants of the OS. they are intended for boxes that work without display and keyboard, which you have. instead, install any normal distro you're familiar with. it's infinitely easier to fix something with the full GUI at your disposal.
this is just your first install, you will iterate, and through that process you'll get better and leaner, in terms of underlying OS. think of it as training wheels on a bike, you'll pull them off eventually.
wired connection only, leave wireless turned off, and assign it a static IP address.
don't do containerS, do one container first. figure out where you're gonna store the compose files, where it will store data, how you will back that data up, etc. then add another. does it fit into your setup? do you need to modify something? rinse. repeat.
casaOS, aside from it's murky background (some chinese startup or sumsuch, forgot?) doesn't provide that path forward nor allows you to learn something, too much hand holding.
good luck.
YUNOhost is designed for this. You can do almost everything graphically via the webadmin. Mine has been running for a couple of years and I'm very happy with it. I have email, XMPP (both of which were installed out of the box), a website, file sharing and a few other things. There are a tonne of apps available, including Fediverse instances, Nextcloud. It's a very cool thing to have available for making self-hosting more accessible.
You can install some Linux distro and then install a docker management web UI like coolify. Requires little terminal knowledge. Though you should learn the terminal.
Try the Fedora Server distro, afaik it should come with Cockpit installed: https://fedoraproject.org/server/
The trade off with Fedora is that has a support window of only a year
There are also Rocky and Alma
I was in the same spot about 3 years ago and I started with Unraid. Got me into docker and dipping my toes into command line stuff.
Honestly though you're going to quickly outgrow your old laptops...
Hey :) I'm not giving you any recommendations but want to give you my personal experience !
5 years ago I had absolutely no clue about Linux/CLI/networking/docker... You name it ! And I also wanted to repurposed and old laptop as a server.
The first distro I installed on my server was Debian ! Why? Because I remembered my brother said something along the line: "Every server infrastructure is run by Debian or a Debian derivative". So this sounded like the perfect thing to install as a server distro :) !
5 years later I'm still running Debian on this old laptop and it's going strong ! Never did it failed me except if I did something wrong over the CLI !
As you guessed it, you will need some degree of proficiency on the command line specially if you install your distro without a graphical user interface, which I would recommend... Yes, the CLI isn't easy to beginning with and you will do some mistakes that will need a full reinstall of your system... But before you learn to move, you learn to stay up right on your legs and this involves a lot a failing !!
It's not mandatory, you can install a lightweight GUI and take your time. There are a lot of application with good UI which will help you out ! However, not once did I regret to take the harder route and learned so many things along the way ! After this amount of time in the CLI, I can say I'm getting quite good In navigating my system, keeping it healthy and alive :p !
Okay, If it's a matter of time I get it ! We only have 24h a day and most of this time is already spend at work/school, family time, friends, sleep, eat ! If you're lucky enough to have 2 hours to spare to tinker arround, a UI is a good idea to keep a healthy balance between all your personal activities ! But keep in mind, both are thorny and have their fair share of issues and debug time.
Last words, have fun with your system :)