I’ve been following this community for some time in order to learn about self-hosting and, while I have learnt about a bunch of cool web services to host, I’m still lost on where/how to start. Does anyone have, like, a very beginner guide that is not just “install this distro and click these buttons”? I have an old laptop that runs Arch (btw), but I’m not familiar with networking at all. So anything starting from “you can check your IP address using ip a” would be appreciated.

More specifically, I have a domain that I want to point to an old laptop of mine (I intend to switch to a VPS if/when I feel like the laptop is starting to lose it). How do I expose my laptop to the internet for this to work (ideally without touching my router, because I’ll be traveling quite a bit with my laptop and don’t mind the occasional downtime). I assume that once I’m able to type my domain name on my mobile and see it open anything from my laptop, I can then setup all the services I want via nginx, but that’s step 2. I tried to follow a few online guides but, like I mentioned, they’re either too simplistic (no I don’t want to move to Ubuntu Server just for this) or too complex (no I don’t know how DHCP works).

Thanks in advance

  • Moonwalk
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    1 year ago

    I think you can get the full Orange Pi kit (Pi + sd + power adapter + case) for around 60 bucks on Amazon. There’s also the option of going with a mini PC, you could find them from around 120 bucks.

    I know you’re not asking for hardware recommendations, but using an old PC may increase your electric bill way more than any of these options, so that’s something to bear in mind.

    • Goddard Guryon@sopuli.xyzOP
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      1 year ago

      That’s fair too. I was just trying to get some use out of my old device, but I think it’ll be better if I simply use to run some CLI tools via SSH that I don’t want running on my main device :P