What triggered it
Started with reviving old hardware, then escalated into the belief that every service should be self-hosted.
Goal
Own the stack, learn Linux deeply, and reduce software subscription sprawl.
What I did
Ran Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and Proxmox phases, built media and note-serving experiments, and documented installs more than actual outcomes.
Summary notes
The terminal joy was real. The uptime anxiety and broken weekend after a casual change were also real.
Lessons learned
- If the point is shipping a project, boring hosting often beats a beautiful homelab.
- Backups are not real until restore is tested.
Mistakes and dead ends
- Reinstalled instead of fixing incrementally.
- Turned infrastructure learning into a substitute for actually publishing the site.