I got Jellyfin up and running, it's 10/10. I love this thing, and it reinvigorated my love for watching movies. So I decided to tackle all the other services I wanted, starting with Paperless-ngx...
What a nightmare. It doesn't have a Windows install so I made an Ubuntu VM. Don't get me started on Ubuntu. I just spent about 12hrs trying to get Portainer to cooperate and had to give up. I tried just installing Paperless the "normal way" and had to give up on that too.
My point: if you're getting started selfhosting you have to embrace and accept the self-inflicted punishment. Good luck everybody, I don't know if I can keep choosing to get disappointed.
Edit: good news! Almost everything I wanted to do is covered by Jellyfin which can be done in Windows.
It'd be an obnoxiously long comment chain, plus its starting to feel like its not worth the effort. I've found some Windows alternatives to the stuff I was trying to do since I made the point which has been great! Still missing some functionality, but its better than what I was doing a few hours ago
Just suggesting, next time, asking for help before you get to frustrated and give up. We all started somewhere and that's what this community is good at.
I appreciate it, I was asking for help through Github and (when forced to) Discord, but the help wasn't consistently helpful so I tapped out on that too