In January 2024, I bought my first Raspberry Pi, and since then I have been using it to self-host a wide variety of services that replace proprietary apps that I use every day. All of the apps and services I run are docker compose stacks for ease of use and security.

For instance, I decided to move away from using Google's password manager and instead serve my own password manager using Vaultwarden, which is a Bitwarden compatible server that you can host yourself.

Other services I run include a VPN, a Minecraft server for me and my friends, Nextcloud for file storage, a CouchDB database to sync my university notes for free, and a reverse proxy so that I can safely expose these services to the internet without having to use a VPN at all times.

Since the Pi runs Raspberry Pi OS, which is Debian based, I had to learn some Linux commands to manage it and install programs. I ended up liking it so much that I transitioned to using Linux on my laptop, replacing Windows for my day-to-day tasks.

In my spare time, I have been going through an open source full stack web development course.

I am currently around 90% of the way through the Foundations course, which goes over an introduction to HTML, CSS and some basic JavaScript. It also requires users to learn how to use Git in order to manage and version our work, which has been really helpful in my work even outside this course. This website has been created using knowledge gained by doing this course!

Once I have finished the Foundations course, I will continue learning the Full Stack JavaScript path.