Of note, PurelyMail sounds pretty good, I might have to check that one out. Looks like it’s based in the U.S. though, so that could be a problem for some.

Disroot (Netherlands) is pretty good, that’s one that I have used before, and I’ve also heard that Fastmail (Australia) and mailbox.org (Germany) are good paid options but have never tried either.

I set up Radicale first, and never bothered to switch. Also, something about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I run all of this on my old laptop with Debian installed, and it works quite well!

Another thing, “Navidrome” is a self-hosted spotify alternative (I don’t use it, I just have the MP3s and OGGs stored locally for offline playback!)

Jellyfin is a self-hosted netflix alternative. Where you get the media is up to you…

Home Assistant seems like a really good option if you want smart home stuff, but I personally have a “dumb” home and not planning on getting wifi light bulbs any time soon.

Personally:

Nextcloud (file backup and so much more, I use it to backup files from my computer. Might explore some of the other features soon)

Immich (image backup, I use it to back up photos from my camera + phone)

Radicale (CalDAV + CardDAV for calendar and contacts sync)

Forgejo (GitHub alternative, and the backend of Codeberg! I use this as a local backup to my git repos in addition with cloud backup with Codeberg. They work nice together, when you set two remotes per git repo)

Vikunja (to-do list syncing, don’t use this anymore as I mostly use Joplin for this now)

Joplin (Markdown editor, supports cloud sync with nextcloud, I use this for both notes and to-dos!)

I used to run ConvertX (to convert any file type, whether it’s document, image, video, etc. Think a self-hosted CloudConvert), but I somehow messed up the user permissions and couldn’t log in (100% user error on my part), so I didn’t bother.

Yep, it was restarting my laptop. Oops. I have updated the post. Interestingly enough, the popup doesn’t show when I turn on my laptop outside my local network (e.g. when I’m at school) and only shows up when I’m back home (in my local network), and since I always power off and turn on my laptop at school, I never noticed that restarting was the problem.

It looks like it asks me to log in whenever I restart my computer (I never noticed this since it doesn’t ask me once I am outside my local network, I usually power off my laptop and only turn it on once I’m at school)

I will try restarting and temporarily disconnect and see if the issue pops up. Probably should have done that before…

Fortunately I’m not in Apple’s walled garden. I’m running Fedora KDE :D

It’s the desktop client, should have mentioned that. My browser remembers my device.

When I used iOS, background upload seemed to work okay. On both iOS and Android, though, I occasionally go into the app to manually backup since both like to kill background processes to save on battery life.

I like things being named after cute animals

Stoat is a cute little animal, and they say they chose it because it is quick and clever. Kind of like how “Lemmy” is named after an animal that shares similar properties

Plus, once you put a case on, it becomes thick again!

When I got into self-hosting, I was recommended Yunohost. I’m sure it’s great, but I couldn’t get it to boot, so I ended up using Debian. (which is what Yubohost is running under the hood I believe)

I remember someone telling me that CasaOS is very simple and could also be a good option, but I have no experience with trying to install it or using it.

Most of the self-hosting tutorials I found used either Debian or Ubuntu (a derivative of Debian), so using Debian or one of its derivatives could make it easier to figure out how to set up everything.

As some others have said, you could use a VPN like Tailscale to connect to your local network remotely. Alternatively, you could simply not deal with all the faff and only use your services locally, which is what I do with Nextcloud and Immich. Syncs when I get home but doesn’t when I’m not, and I can always use Tailscale to remotely access my server if there are any issues.

The cool thing about SyncThing is that it’s peer to peer, meaning you don’t need a central server for your files to sync. They can go between your laptop and phone, for example.

Something like Funkwhale does need a server, and to talk to that server outside your local network, you need a domain name.

Personally I use Joplin as it’s super customizable and I like sorting my notes in “notebook”. I am syncing my notes with Nextcloud, but you can also use anything that’s WebDAV, OneDrive (ew), or anything that uses S3 (like Backblaze)