TL;DR: Unsure if I should just run Syncthing, or do a Nextcloud. Tailscale seems at risk of enshittification, so do I find alternatives or just use it for ease? Is Immich easy enough to set up without Tailscale? Stick with docker or podman for ease? Are externsl drives easy to work with? Should my RAID1 be NTFS or Ext4?

Starting My Selfhosting Journey I recently got my drive bay and Optiplex and have already flashed Proxmox onto it so I could eagerly spin up some local services to see what I wanna stick with. Or at least I tried anyway 😅

Jellyfin in a debian container was quick, painless and seems to work fine. But I was trying to set up Nextcloud and I felt lost, with the many different ways people go about it. When I tried to set up Nextcloud AIO in a Debian VM with docker it forces you to set a domain for your instance, but I only want to do local for now (ease and security until I get the hang of things). Which then runs into the hosting a domain via Tailscale problem. 90% of guides, videos, scripts, etc. seem to only focus/support Tailscale, but they force you to use third-party accounts for logins, and I started this whole thing to distance myself from Big Tech. Is Headscale or NetBird a better idea (when I do decide to remotely access)? Who’s more beginner friendly? Similarly, docker or podman?

I do know the difference between Syncthing and Nextcloud, but I wonder which I should stick with. I want to start being better about backing up my phone and laptop, and I know I could use syncthing to share these backups with each other, but I thought it’d be nice to try to replace my minimal Google Drive and Onedrive usage with Nextcloud and just put everything there. I’d still have to backup that data to an external location though if I want to follow the 3-2-1. So should I just do encrypted backups and put them in a cheap provider’s cloud, and drop the idea of a selfhosted cloud?

Similarly related to the Nextcloud issue, is Immich another heavily Tailscale dependant service?

Side note: How easy is it to use external drives with these services I’ve mentioned? I plan to use my drive bay that currently has 2TB (4 drives running in RAID1), so I can only connect to it via cable. Can I have most of my media stored on the drives, or will that not work? Also, I swear I had to keep verifying my login every few mins when accessing my drives on ext4 format? I switched it to NTFS recently but Windows can’t read/see the drives at all (does it not like Linux formatting it?)

Future Ideas: Once I get these first few down, any suggestions? I’m feeling the power rush and craze from being free and able to run my own stuff, and I want to prove to my mom how useful it’ll be. I want to move away from YT Music, and I’ve heard Jellyfin + Jellyamp works good, but is there another I should run (Navidrome)? Should I get into the arr services and torrenting (I do have ProtonVPN)?

I tried looking at previous posts but I just wanted a little more personalized advice. I’m extremely greatful for any help and I will make sure to post my beautiful setup later once I get it going after y’alls input. It’s really exciting thinking about the possibilities!