25/09/2025
In a world dominated by sprawling cloud infrastructure and over-engineered software services, the highest priority for most big tech companies is no longer to provide the best quality services for their customers, but to extract as much money as possible from them.
The choice of prioritizing profit over quality has permeated every field of software services, from Google allowing sponsored search results, to Youtube slowing itself down on web browsers and to the streaming services where my favourite content (that I paid for) could be taken down any day.
The consequences of this business approach are varied, but the one that hit me most strongly has been the decline in the quality of the services. I find these practices rather unpleasant and I'd like to avoid services and products that employ them whenever possible. Fortunately, thanks to the open source community and thousands of passionate developers, there is a vast range of open source programs to explore and choose from.
I admit these are not the only reasons that compel me to build my own miniature cloud. As a passionate tinkerer and Linux user, I am fascinated by the prospect of assembling my own servers and running my own services.
In the following paragraphs I'm going to explain my journey of self-hosting and the lessons I learned along the way.