99% of people want computers to serve them, not to be fun. My SO couldn't care less how much fun I have setting up home assistant. They just want to turn on the lights.

Personally I don't enjoy setting things up. I do enjoy not being tied down to evil corporations.

This same argument goes for Linux as well. Linux allows you to turn the computer into anything you want it to be!

I recently discovered that Plex no longer works over local network, if you lose internet service. A) you can't login without internet access. B) even if you're already logged in, apps do not find and recognize your local server without internet access. So, yeah, Plex is already there.

I’d say plex is up there. “Want to use your hardware and bandwidth to view your own files? Pay us!”

No way, plex is completely enshitified.

I would say yes, it's still self-hosting. It's probably not "home labbing", but it's still you responsible for all the services you host yourself, it's just the hardware which is managed by someone else.

Also don't let people discourage you from doing bare-metal.

It depends who you ask (which we can already tell hehe), but I'd say YES, because you're the one running the show -- you're free to grab all of your bits and pieces at any time, and move to a different provider. That flexibility of not being locked into one specific cloud service (which can suddenly take a bad turn) is what's precious to me.

And on a related note, I also make sure that this applies to my software-stack too -- I'm not running anything that would be annoying to swap out if it turns bad.

It’s self hosting as long as you are in control of the data you’re hosting.

I would say there's no value in assigning such a tight definition on self-hosting--in saying that you must use your own hardware and have it on premise.

I would define selfhost as setting up software/hardware to work for you, when turn-key solutions exist because of one reason or another.

Netflix exists. But we selfhost Jellyfin. Doesn't matter if its not on our hardware or not. What matters is that we're not using Netflix.

Is a cheap VPS on hetzner where I installed python, PieFed and it’s Postgres database but also nginx and letsencrpt manually by mydelf and pointed my domain to it, selfhosting?

I don't get hung up on the definitions and labels. I run a hybrid of 3 vps and one rack in the closet. I'm totally fine with you thinking that is not selfhosting or homelabbing. LOL I have a ton of fun doing it, and that's the main reason why I do it; to learn and have fun. It's like producing music, or creating bonsai, or any of the other many hobbies I have.

Dude Navidrome is so great. I hooked my my decades worth of music collection up to it and now I can stream b-side tracks and indie bands that weren't on Spotify. Plus when I hit random I know it's actually random and not some algo to sell the newest slop that Spotify is pushing.

If it didn’t ask me irrelevant personal information

Quadlet is a game changer

https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/quadlet-podman