It’s a little bit of everything.

I haven’t really dabbled with tech much outside of work since college. This year, I started on a huge journey to change that for a couple of reasons:

• The ongoing technofascist shitshow was the biggest motivator. I want to move as far away from big tech as possible. I’m sick of passively supporting companies that supply and fund genocides, steal and cheat their way to billions, and shove AI bullshit into everything.
• Regaining control and privacy. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Complacency is part of how we got here.
• On a personal note, I quit Twitch streaming last year after a decade, and frankly just needed a new hobby.
• The Steam Deck showed me that gaming on Linux day-to-day is extremely viable after all these years. Last time I tried a Linux desktop, it was practically non-existent outside of Valve porting the Orange Box.
• It just makes for some interesting projects

I’ve done all of this in the past 5 months:

• Got a new desktop (I just needed the upgrade in general), tweaked the hell out of Windows on it, but wanted more
• Scrapped that plan and set up a CachyOS dual boot. I’ve touched Windows maybe 5 times since then. I keep it around just in case but I never use it.
• Wiped my bloated phone and installed GrapheneOS
• Started making some moves on the software side: finally bought a good VPN, moved off GMail to Tuta, started using LibreWolf and Fennec, etc etc.
• In that process, I got a cheap VPS and set up NextCloud as a Drive replacement. No idea what I was doing, security nightmare I’m sure, and I ended up scrapping that and going the full selfhost route
• Now I’m selfhosting 40ish services on a mini PC that not only replace big tech products I used to use, but also add so much more utility