this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2025
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Please bear with me as I don't know where else to ask.

I want to start to self host but do not know where to start. I would like to start small. Just something that might not be beneficial but to get my feet wet. It does not even have to be practical.

I am not tech illiterate and have my fair share of technology around me hut self hosting has always been a daunting task.

I am scared to start.

I am already using a PiHole at home but that was kind of plug and play and just worked.

I would be incredibly grateful if someone could guide me to some resource or tell me what an easy first step would be.

An FAQ or self hosting for dummies.

Most resources I found assumed some previous knowledge.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you want to give Home Assistant a try like others are suggesting, save yourself some time and hassle and install Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine. While you absolutely can run it in Docker you lose out on some neat quality of life improvements like add ons (which, funnily enough, are Docker containers pre-configured to hook in HA).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

What add-ons are you talking about? I run HA via Docker and I have full access to HACS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

HACS installs community integrations whereas addons are like external programs that hook in HA. You can do the same thing with HA in Docker by installing the addon containers separately and then hooking them in manually but HA OS makes it much simpler.

For example I'm running the Mosquitto broker, Z2M, a Visual Studio Code server, diyhue, and Music Assistant as addons.

Docco page about it is here: https://www.home-assistant.io/addons/