mikeroyal/self-hosting-guide

The Self-Hosting Guide is a large, curated reference document, an "awesome list", for anyone who wants to run software on their own hardware or private server instead of relying on commercial cloud services. Self-hosting means you install and operate applications yourself: your own cloud storage instead of Google Drive, your own chat server instead of Discord, your own password manager instead of LastPass. The guide collects tools and instructions for getting started with that approach. The guide covers an enormous breadth of categories: containers (Docker, Kubernetes), continuous integration and deployment pipelines, web servers, large language models you can run locally, home automation via Home Assistant, VPNs using WireGuard, databases, media servers, note-taking apps, photo libraries, password managers, DNS, monitoring dashboards, smart home devices, and much more. It also includes hardware recommendations (including Raspberry Pi builds), suggested operating systems, books, podcasts, and YouTube channels for learning. Someone would turn to this guide when they want to stop paying for cloud subscriptions, improve their privacy by keeping data on their own machines, or learn how to run server software at home. It is particularly useful for hobbyists setting up a home lab, small organizations wanting control over their data, or technically curious people wanting to understand the full self-hosting ecosystem. The guide itself is a Dockerfile-tagged repository, reflecting its focus on container-based deployment patterns.