Looking for a recommendation on an LLM that can guide a user on how to manually set up a home server that runs Jellyfin, Arr Stack, etc. Have a couple of friends interested and I have some spare old NUCs I was going to give them, so I was going to download the software for them and then walk them through it.
But it’ll be difficult to align our schedules for the next month or so (school starting and different time zones) so then I thought maybe I could just run an LLM they could use on my main PC for when they have time.
Why not just use one of the existing services? Those cost extra money and none of us want to financially support those companies.
I asked mostly because I haven’t seen any guides like that. The long video guides are also usually outdated or a very specific method that’s more advanced (like bare metal setup or using ignition)
My plan was to lead them through something like what I use which is base Debian using Dockge and a reverse proxy (though I’m looking into KDE Plasma BigScreen). I think they might be able to figure it out with help and some general written instructions and the AI for further questions.
For the arr stack the best resource I know is https://wiki.servarr.com/ which I referenced for my setup in Kubernetes.
Most projects have pretty good documentation on how to setup their services, in many cases its just the Docker config afterall.
It’s a good reference guide, yes, but it’s not good for beginners. The linked TRaSH guide seems better but I think are still a lot.
The issue I’ve found when searching for resources for them is that there’s really no guide me for people who know very little but want to do this and guides them in the proper steps from beginning to end. I have an IT degree and even I remember struggling a little bit when I first delved into self hosting because I never really studied networking, and networking feels like a different field entirely. Right now self hosting in general reminds me of the early days of Slackware (maybe even SLS) Linux (for those that remember) - you kind of have to ask around and figure things out on your own through a bunch of lookup.
I’m trying to ease the friction a little bit for those that want too start, and want to see if an LLM that can quickly define some words and tell you not only where to start but the steps after that based on your skill/knowledge level can ease some of that friction.
At least until one day self hosting becomes about as easy as modern Linux.