I recently became interessted in learning about static site generators. So I decided to start a little 11ty blog, in which I teach people, who are new to self-hosting, how to securely set up their own server with Ubuntu and Docker.
For now, I’ve got my Beginners Guide series as well as a more detailed introduction to SSH and its features. I plan to eventually write down all I’ve learned about self-hosting in the past 20 years.
Hope it ends up being helpful for some of you.
EDIT (2025-10-28): Finally got around to get a proper domain and switched my blog to Hugo. Much easier to deal with and more capable imho than 11ty (and actually useful documentation as well). Oh and got rid of Netlify. Their 300 credit limit for a free deploy project is far too limiting if any deploy costs 15 credits…
Personally I strongly recommend Debian over Ubuntu.
Personally I would recommend Proxmox. It’s a debian based distro for hosting containers and virtual machines
+1 for ProxMox.
I have that running and it’s pretty easy to work with
And what OS do you implement there? Debian? :p
Yes, as I said it’s a debian base. But Proxmox is built for servers and using it to host and share containers or virtual machines is super simple. Especially with the community helper scripts that can set up different self-hosting projects within minutes with minimal tinkering.
Sorry I think I forgot to write the word.
What do you use as your guest OS? Debian? :p
It depends on the project/container. Some containers run Debian, some Alpine, some Ubuntu. I mostly rely on the community scripts from here and use the defaults.
https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/
I guess everything that supports containers, QEMU and KVM is compatible to use as a guest OS in Proxmox.
What about Mint /s
But Mint though :-)
This +1 because just an upvote didn’t feel strong enough
Why is that, if I may ask? I’ve used both for years and personally I find Ubuntu has fewer footguns for a new user, and an easisr upgrade process.
I prefer Debian’s community-driven governance model, the higher degree of freedom over the system and lack of preinstalled software that I neither need nor want, and the quiet stability that Debian offers.
I also have just not liked Ubuntu’s decisions over the years. Little things that piled up like the Unity stuff a few years back (or I guess almost a decade at this point), the forced inclusion of snapd, that time they said they wouldn’t offer 32-bit libraries, the little message advertising Ubuntu Pro in the shell.
I’ve always felt like Debian is happy to just get out of the way and let you use it how you want to use it. That control is what I look for in a distro. What you call “footguns” are to me just more options for control.
Yeah, I don’t know anything about self-hosting, but I’ve recently been working on switching from Windows 10 to Linux and I’ve been really enjoying Kubuntu so far.
Whille I agree, when it comes to the Ubuntu Desktop, their Server OS has been a stable, reliable and well supported system for me.