My Self-Hosting Journey

Back in 2020 when the pandemic started I decided to buy a Raspberry Pi to play with while being stuck at home. My main goal was to deploy a network wide adblocker called Pi-Hole.

Since the Raspberry Pi uses Raspbian which is a Linux like OS it gave me exposure to Linux which at the time I had minimal knowledge. Through work I used Linux at times to perform different activities but it was infrequent so I didn't have the opportunity to really sit down and learn. Having to use Raspbian instead of Windows it allowed me to learn Linux and get familiar with a new OS.

Today I have two different computers which run Linux and host different self-hosted applications from my house. I still use my Raspberry Pi to perform network wide adblocking as well as a desktop computer which I recently changed from Windows 10 to Ubuntu.

Converting all of my Windows based scripts, Docker containers, and desktop applications which I used for maintenance was a learning experience on Ubuntu. I figured out how to get scripts configured on Ubuntu to perform the same functions that used to run on Windows (Powershell/CMD) to Linux (Bash Script). I did get some help with the help of Google Gemini Ai as it makes it easier to quickly get code for different scripts. As a Software Test Engineer I am well versed in testing the scripts before deploying them and setting up monitoring so that if the script fails I get notified.

As of this post I have over 60 Docker containers running across both of my computers and I'll post more about what they are and why I use them.