I got Jellyfin up and running, it’s 10/10. I love this thing, and it reinvigorated my love for watching movies. So I decided to tackle all the other services I wanted, starting with Paperless-ngx…
What a nightmare. It doesn’t have a Windows install so I made an Ubuntu VM. Don’t get me started on Ubuntu. I just spent about 12hrs trying to get Portainer to cooperate and had to give up. I tried just installing Paperless the “normal way” and had to give up on that too.
My point: if you’re getting started selfhosting you have to embrace and accept the self-inflicted punishment. Good luck everybody, I don’t know if I can keep choosing to get disappointed.
Edit: good news! Almost everything I wanted to do is covered by Jellyfin which can be done in Windows.
Doing anything new will require work/pain the first few times. It is just part of the learning process. If that sudden jolt of happiness when you get it working can outweigh the depression caused by hours of trudging through the setup/failures, you’ll constantly be improving. Like all things, give it a fair shot and if it brings you more pain than pleasure, stop doing it.
There are now a lot of people who are making a living from providing self-hosted services to others for small fees. Even if you decide to not self-host, there are multiple ways to get the lion’s share of benefits. Its not a binary choice between Google and self-hosting.