Selfhosted

If you want to get straight to the fun, I might recommend: https://cosmos-cloud.io/

It will handle all of the uninteresting stuff like docker, reverse proxies, ssl certificates, etc. You can get straight to adding apps either by pasting in a docker-compose, or getting them straight from the cosmos marketplace.

Also, it works with standard tools, so other than the reverse proxy, it's easy to migrate away from if you want. I think the reverse proxy is just caddy, but I don't know where the caddy config file goes or how to pull it out of the funky cosmos config format.

Maybe not a service in the typical sense, but setting up your router+server to route your home network traffic through a VPN is a fun project.

My router (MikroTik) supports WireGuard, so I can use it with Mullvad for the whole house---but wg is demanding and it's a slow router, so while it can NAT at ~1Gbps, it can't do WireGuard at more than ~90Mbps. So, I set up WireGuard/Mullvad on a little SBC with a fast processor, and have my router use that instead. Using policy based routing and/or mangling, I can have different VLANs/subnets/individual hosts selectively routed through the VPN.

It's a fun exercise, not sure I implemented it in a smart way, but it works :)

I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself.

Well, you kind of have to have the infrastructure to make the fun happen. Docker is probably one of the more easy to deploy from the standpoint of someone just standing up a server.

• media server: Navidrome is what I use, but there are a plethora of choices
• photos app: Immich is quite popular, but again there are a list of them
• game servers: There are several that I know of like Doom , Minecraft, iirc there is a Quake server, I think you can integrate Steam. I can't run games because of a seizure condition, but maybe others can chime in.
• home automation: HomeAssistant, NodeRed, N8N, Ansible, just literally tons of automation

These and thousands of other apps can be deployed via Docker. You don't have to use docker, you can install on bare metal as well, tho containers make things neat and tidy.

As far as 'fun', to me it's all fun. I selfhost for the utility, privacy, security, and anonymity of it, the educational part of it, and because it's fun. My version of fun is going to vary widely from yours probably, but I find learning quite fun. Sky's the limit pretty much.

My link collector.

RSSHub. Being able to get all my updates in one place changed how I view the internet for the better.

Maybe an IRC server/bouncer

Your own wiki, and your own social media-type service

I post miscellaneous notes to my social media-type service, and save lists and more organised information (including recipes) to my wiki.

Adguard Home, with domain pointed to it and using it as Private DNS on Android. No more ads anywhere!

https://docspell.org/ for organizing your documents using machine learning.

I started with NextCloud, mainly so I can start synchronizing Joplin notes. Maybe I could hook it up to also sync Logseq?

I chose this VTT because it's dead simple and description on owlbear legacy did not sound encouraging

Then, on my list I have

• LibreTranslate
• tootik

If you have a Nvidia graphics card 1070 and above, then openwebui. You can selfhost your own LLM. AMD is probably supported but haven't checked.