Hello! I’m new to self hosting and networking stuff. I do use only Linux and have experience with Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and have settled with Fedora and Bazzite on KDE on the home computers/laptops.
I got a GMKtec NucBox G9 Mini PC Intel® Twin Lake N150 recently and wireless keyboard with touchpad, installed Fedora Kiinoite on it and have so far only added VacuumTube. I don’t have much experience with the terminal and I’m not sure what step to do next or how.
What I want to do is set up an Arrstack, and I know I need to put Docker and maybe Portainer? I have no experience with Docker though. I also want to put some basic things I and others can access remotely like a shopping list program, photo backups, period tracker, and DnD software. But I’m very afraid of exposing the server to the internet and it being hacked or such. I know there’s something called Tailscale but I’m not sure if that’s what I need. And I don’t know what order I’m supposed to put any of this.
I’ve tried searching the internet for guides but haven’t really found anything except one that’s for Yunohost and it’s not really self hosting because they set it up on a cloud. All advice is appreciated. Thank you!
Hi and welcome to the club.
First of all a disclosure I am not an IT guy and or programmer and barely know what I am doing myself :D
My first question is: Is your Nuc dedicated hosting hardware?
If so i would maybe suggest an OS that is more hosting focused, I personally use unraid, a friend of mine already used it at the time and helped me set everything up so I just went with it. TrueNAS is the real og and workhorse of the selfhosting world and also big in the professional space. Unraid is pretty simple but more heavy on sytem useage while truenas is more light weight but needs a bit more work beeing done manually. TrueNAS is free, undraid you pay a one time license. Those are the big 2 I know about.
Both of these options have an insane ammount of documentation. And ready to go docker for basically anything you could want.
There is of course much more, for example Debian server comes to mind. If this is not dedicated hosting hardware and you need a normal desktop environment I can’t help much there.
As far as I understand: Never expose anything directly to the internet. Tailscale is a good option, I personally use nginx proxy manager as reverse proxy. Both should be fine but Tailscale is more secure tho. I also only have 3 things exposed: Nextcloud, Immich and foundry vtt. And keep your shit up to date :D
Hope this helps for now. If you have any additional questions or I missed an important part for you just ask :)
Unraid is pretty beginner-friendly, so it’s what I’d recommend too.
I use it too. I have over 20 years experience running Debian servers and can write a docker-compose.yml file and Nginx config from scratch, but sometimes it’s nice to have a decent web UI that mostly “just works”.