Learn Linux and host your own stuff. Everyone should, and here's why

Here's an opinion I'm not going to apologise for. Everyone who works with computers should learn a bit of Linux and host some of their own shit, on a machine they actually own.

Not because it's cheaper (it often is). Not because it's more secure (it can be). Because at some point we all stopped understanding the tools we rely on every day, and started renting them instead. I think that's a quietly bad deal, and Linux is the easiest way I know to start getting some of it back.

We rent everything now

Think about what you pay for each month. Your files live in Dropbox or Google Drive. Your passwords in 1Password. Your photos in iCloud. Your music, films, notes and to-do lists all sit somewhere else, on someone else's computer, under someone else's terms.

Each one is a few pounds a month, which is exactly how they get you. Nobody signs up for £60 a month of subscriptions. They sign up for one at £4.99, then another, then the price goes up, then a feature you used moves to the "Pro" plan. Ten years later you're paying more every year for less control, and you couldn't leave if you wanted to, because your stuff is in their format, on their servers.

That's not a conspiracy. It's just the business model. But you don't have to go along with all of it.

This is what personal computing was supposed to be

I grew up on the home computer dream: Amstrads, Amigas, and the stories of Woz building the Apple I because he wanted a computer of his own. The whole point was that the machine on your desk was yours. You could open it up, poke at it, break it, fix it and make it do something nobody had thought of.

The counter-culture people who shaped early computing had a phrase for it: "access to tools". Give people decent tools and the knowledge to use them, and they'll build their own lives rather than buying a ready-made one.

Somewhere along the way we swapped that for a sealed box and a monthly bill. Linux is where the original idea is still alive. It's free, it's open, it runs most of the internet, and nothing in it is hidden from you if you care to look.

It's the same thing as vinyl

Look around and you'll notice people quietly pulling back from renting everything. Record shops are busy again. People are buying paperbacks instead of Kindle editions, film cameras, cassettes even. Repair cafés are popping up in church halls, full of people fixing toasters and lamps rather than binning them.

I don't think that's just nostalgia. It's the same instinct. A record on your shelf is yours. Nobody can pull it from a catalogue, put the price up, or decide you only had a licence to listen to it. I've got a growing pile of vinyl, and part of the pleasure is that it just sits there, belonging to me, needing nothing from anyone.

Streaming and e-books are brilliant in lots of ways. But when you buy a Kindle book, you're buying permission to read it on their device for as long as they say so. A paperback you can lend to a mate, scribble in, or find in a charity shop twenty years later.

Self-hosting is the digital version of the record shelf. Your photos on your box, your files in your format, your music on your own server. Things you own rather than things you're allowed to use.

And it's the same as repairing rather than replacing. Most of the "obsolete" laptops in drawers across the country work fine. They've just been abandoned by the software that came on them. Put Linux on one and it'll happily run for years more as a server. That's a machine kept out of landfill, and a few subscriptions cancelled, from something you already own. It's about as close to fixing a toaster as computing gets, and twice as satisfying.

Why bother, when the cloud just works?

Fair question. The cloud does just work, right up until it doesn't. Here's what you get from doing it yourself.

You understand your own tools. This is the big one for me. When you've set something up yourself, you know how it works. When it breaks, you can fix it. When someone tries to sell you something, you can tell whether it's any good. That knowledge doesn't go out of date the way a product does.

Your stuff stays yours. Your photos, files and passwords sit on a box in your house, in standard formats, backed up where you choose. No terms of service change can take them away. No company going bust can lock you out.

It's genuinely cheaper. An old laptop or a second-hand mini PC that would otherwise go in a drawer can replace several subscriptions on its own. The software is free. Your electricity bill will barely notice.

It's calming. This might sound odd, but I find it true. Fewer accounts, fewer apps fighting for your attention, fewer emails about price changes. A simple setup you understand is far more peaceful than a dozen services you don't. Less stuff, better stuff.

It's an antidote to AI anxiety. We're about to hand more and more of our lives to AI systems that nobody fully understands, run by a handful of very large companies. I use AI every day and I'm not against it. But the people who'll do well over the next ten years are the ones who still understand what's going on underneath. Learning how a computer actually works has never been better value.

"But I'm not technical"

You're more technical than you think. If you can follow a recipe, you can follow a guide to installing Linux. The secret nobody tells you is that most people who "know Linux" know about twenty commands and how to search for the rest.

Zen has an idea called beginner's mind: coming to something with curiosity and no assumptions, the way a beginner does. It's the right attitude here. You will break things. That's fine. Breaking a box in your spare room is how you learn, and it's a lot cheaper than breaking one at work.

How to actually start

You don't need to replace everything at once. Start with one small thing and build from there.

1. Find a spare machine. Start with what you've already got. That old laptop in the drawer is perfect, and giving it a second life beats sending it for recycling. If you've nothing spare, a second-hand mini PC (a used office machine from eBay for under £100) or a Raspberry Pi will do. It doesn't need to be powerful.

2. Install Linux on it. I'd suggest Debian or Ubuntu Server. Both are free, well supported, and have more beginner guides online than you'll ever read. Use the server version with no desktop: you'll learn more, and it'll run faster.

3. Learn to log in from your main computer. It's called SSH, it's built into Mac, Linux and Windows, and it's how you'll talk to your server from now on. Once you can do this, you're properly up and running.

4. Install Docker. Docker lets you run apps in neat little containers, each set up with a short text file. It means you can try something, decide you don't like it, and delete it without leaving a mess behind.

5. Pick your first app. Choose something that solves a real annoyance, so you'll actually keep using it. Some good first ones:

• AdGuard Home or Pi-hole blocks adverts and trackers for every device in your house. Instant, visible results, which is good for motivation.
• Vaultwarden is a password manager that works with the Bitwarden apps, on your own box. I've compared it with 1Password and LastPass.
• Immich backs up your phone's photos like Google Photos or iCloud does, without anyone else seeing them.
• Nextcloud gives you files and sharing like Dropbox or Google Drive. More on that in my Dropbox and Google Drive alternatives.
• Jellyfin is your own Netflix for the films and music you already own.

6. Reach it safely from outside. Don't start opening ports on your router. Use Tailscale, which builds a private network between your devices so you can get to your server from anywhere without exposing it to the internet.

7. Back it up. Before you trust it with anything important. The old rule is three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one somewhere other than your house. A server with no backups isn't self-hosting, it's just a slower way of losing things.

The honest bit

I'd be lying if I said this was all free and easy. It isn't.

You become the IT department. Updates, backups and fixing things when they break are now your job. Set aside an hour or so a month, and turn on automatic security updates from day one.

Don't host your own email. Seriously. I've run the DNS and mail servers for a whole company, so I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying getting your messages past the big providers' spam filters is a miserable, never-ending job, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone doing this for fun. Use a decent paid provider and spend the effort on something more rewarding.

Some things are better rented. Accounts software, for instance, needs to keep up with the tax rules. Self-hosting is about choosing what you own, not owning everything out of principle.

Keep it simple. The temptation, once you get going, is to run forty containers because you can. Resist it. The best setup is the smallest one that does what you need. I say that as someone who has absolutely not always followed his own advice.

Take some of it back

None of this is about dropping out of modern life or living in a cabin with a ThinkPad. I love good technology, and I'll happily pay for the things worth paying for.

It's about knowing how your tools work, owning the stuff that matters to you, and not being quite so easy to sell to. Buy the record. Read the paperback. Fix the thing. Run your own server on the laptop you nearly threw away. Start with one box and one app, and see how it feels.

Worst case, you'll learn something. Best case, you'll get a bit of that original home computer magic back, and cancel a couple of subscriptions while you're at it.

For businesses

Everything above works just as well for a small business, with higher stakes. If you'd like the benefits (no per-user fees, your data in the UK and under your control) without learning it all yourself, that's exactly what I do.