I started building a homelab a few years back. Levelling-up my Linux knowledge and succeeding with dockers and VMs on the NAS but not, until now, on dedicated hardware. It's currently functional-with-bumps, but the WAN at home is a 10 year old neurotic DSL with only 120Mbit/50Mbit. So not fast-fast/24-7. Remote access is via Tailscale. Good for Calendar, Notes, and (potentially, if and when the "Error when trying to connect (Bad healthcheck status)" thing is resolved) Office. So it currently, for me, is a kind of proof of concept:

That I can, in fact, host my own services on my own hardware and retain total control over all of my data therein.

Will probably get a mini ITX somethingorother or a used Thinkcentre within the next week or two; plonk Nextcloud AIO in a Proxmox thingy/VM and get that running well locally before migrating it to a dedicated off-site, probably Hetzner. The off-site then eventually becomes the production, with the local for dev and testing before pushing.

I could even take the time to do Pen-testing, for example, but access would be exclusively via Tailscale/Wireshark anyway - so no internet facing TCP services at all.

New users (family or friends), would access exclusively via Tailscale/Wireshark.

While I digress, my point is that I ultimately want a solution that is not fucking Google. is not fucking Google indicates that my options are, and ultimate choice is, based purely on trust.

Proton are offering exactly and precisely what I want and need!! :

"A better internet starts with privacy and freedom" "Trusted by over 100 million users and organizations" "Communicate and browse. Privately." "Store, share, collaborate. Securely."

It's simple! The interfaces are simple! Great VPN. Reliable Password manager. Works perfectly on all my devices. The office bits and the calendar are simple; kind of like a polished Google Documents from twenty years ago. They're not as functional as any of my other officey things; in a quirky but sometimes annoying way; but I didn't mind at all because:

I trusted and believed in the core ethos of Proton.

Great products. Perfect offer. Trust.

Andy's abhorrent behaviour, and the way this whole fuckup has been absurdly non-handled with a total lack of responsibility, completely destroyed my trust. Pretty damn fast too. Sorry for the rant but I'm so so tired of it all and it pissed me off.

To answer your question:

• Passwords: Bitwarden > Vault Warden
• VPN: No idea yet
• Nextcloud AIO
• WeTransfer for large transfers

I trust the fractured services and self-hosting more now.

What about you?