February 10, 2026
Boot wars and home‑lab heartbreak
The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey
From quiet boots to “self-hosting sucks” — this Linux saga split the room
TLDR: A Linux convert moved off Windows, built a home server, and took control of his site—triggering a split between “self-hosting is pain” and “finally, peace and quiet.” Pragmatists advised Docker over Proxmox and VPN‑protected labs, a reminder that control is powerful but the learning curve can bite beginners.
One dev’s glow‑up from Windows to Linux lit a fuse in the comments. The poster ditched Windows for Debian, hacked together a Windows-in-a-box for gaming via GPU passthrough, bailed on big platforms for a personal VPS and Hugo, and turned a Raspberry Pi (later an old desktop) into a home server with ad‑blocking and file syncing. It’s a classic control‑your‑tech story… and the crowd had feelings.
The loudest take? “Self‑hosting sucks” if you try it while learning Linux, warns one commenter, calling it pain on top of pain. On the other side, a newly minted Ubuntu fan is basking in the peace and quiet—no more “87 meaningless Windows notifications.” Meanwhile, a long‑time Windows user tried trendy distros in a virtual machine and declared: “Linux is still not there yet on the desktop.” Cue fireworks. The pragmatists stepped in: skip the heavy Proxmox at first, use Docker/Dockge on Debian; and for home labs, isolate on a separate network and reach it via a VPN like Tailscale. It’s part sermon, part stand‑up: serenity vs. struggle, tinkerer pride vs. time sink—exactly the messy, meme‑able energy the Linux world thrives on.
Key Points
- •The author switched from Windows 10 to Linux in 2023, using Debian 11 as the primary distro.
- •Gaming with anti-cheat was handled via a Windows VM using QEMU/KVM and GPU passthrough, later updated to Windows 11 in 2024.
- •A personal website was migrated from Vercel/Next.js to Hugo and self-hosted on a Hostinger VPS with defined hardware specs.
- •Server management included Nginx, Certbot, GitHub Actions, systemd, SSH, and CrowdSec for security.
- •A home server evolved from a Raspberry Pi 4 running Syncthing and Pi-hole to a Proxmox VE setup on a repurposed desktop upgraded with an Intel i5-12400 and 32 GB RAM.