Self Hosted Apps

I do not like Docker or other containerization software for self hosting apps. It isn't an insane amount of work to set something up "bare metal" when you're not operating at scale. You also have to work around points of overhead like NAT and drive loopbacks etc. Containers are built around the idea you want to preserve an environment exactly as is, which is great for deployments but not maintaining software. It is the opposite of sustainable. You want to design an environment that can be changed and rebuilt constantly without issue, with as few abstraction layers as is within reason. A container running Nextcloud isn't going to look so pretty after a year or two of updates and patchwork sysadmin changes, and if its anything serious the linux machine its running on is going have a pile of networking configs and tunables on its own.

I also despise package managers and relying on some random endpoint to be online otherwise I can't update my software, even if all the binaries and source exists.

I create setup workflows and procedures for everything I use so I can start from scratch and be done in about an hour. I use VM's for isolation, net+sec foolproofing, and to pick between Windows, Linux, etc. depending on what the software I use runs happiest on. I'm also already "stuck" with VMs since I'm running TrueNAS, PfSense, etc. all on the same hardware.

I use headless Debian with SSH whenever possible for obvious reasons, but for stuff like my Servarr stack and qBittorrent I use windows as all these things are VERY easy and clean to set up on Windows and I can be more sure of locking their networks down.