I’m trying to better understand hosting a Lemmy Instance. Lurking discussions it seems like some people are hosting from the Cloud or VPS. My understanding is that it’s better to futureproof by running your own home server so that you have the data and the top most control of hardware, software etc. My understanding is that by hosting an instance via Cloud or VPS you are offloading the data / information to a 3rd party.
Are people actually running their own actual self-hosted servers from home? Do you have any recommended guides on running a Lemmy Instance?
No that’s a homelab. Selfhosted applies to the software that you install and administrate yourself so you have full control over it. If it was about running hardware at home we’d see more posts about hardware.
I would say that a homelab is more about learning, developing, breaking things.
Running esoteric protocols, strange radio/GPS setups, setting up and tearing down CI/CD pipelines, autoscalers, over-complicated networks and storage arrays.
Whereas (self)hosting is about maintaining functionality and uptime.
You could self-host with hardware at home, or on cloud infra. Ultimately it’s running services yourself instead of paying someone else to do it.
I guess self-hosting is a small step away from earning money (or does earn money). Reliable uptime, regular maintenance etc.
Homelabbing is just a money sink for fun, learning and experience. Perhaps your homelab turns into self-hosting. Or perhaps part of your self-hosting infra is dedicated to a lab environment.
Homelab is as much about software as it is about hardware. Trying new filesystems, new OSs, new deployment pipelines, whatever