Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
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If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.
You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.
Could you recommend a source for learning how to use the command line? In the past I struggled with understanding the basic commands and the various flags. I've found it difficult to find good documentation, but I would like to learn
I highly recommend O'Reilly's Learning the Bash Shell in paperback form: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-bash/0596009658/.
The other responses you've received so far don't offer much insight into the historical background and underlying mechanics of the shell, which are crucial to understanding the "Why?"s of command-line quirkiness.
Thanks for your reply. I agree the 'why' is important, for me that usually makes things more intuitive
A 20 year old paperback book seems like a bad choice.
It's a 36 y/o language, mate. I still reference my copy all the time, and found it to be a great definitive resource when I was learning.
How many bash 4/5 features are you seriously using on a regular basis? What do you think is out-of-date?
Are you under the impression that that language hasn't changed?
It’s been a long time since I learned, so I don’t remember exactly what I used, but at a cursory glance, this one looks good:
https://www.terminaltutor.com/
Also, learning to read man pages will help a lot. Here’s an article on that:
https://itsfoss.com/linux-man-page-guide/
I do remember using “terminal cheat sheets” like this:
https://phoenixnap.com/kb/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/linux-commands-cheat-sheet-pdf.pdf
Thanks for the very practical resources!
Find a problem or project that requires the terminal to solve it, follow the instructions laid out, and execute. Once you’ve done it, try tolook back at what you did and understand exactly what was going on under the hood. You can’t just “study terminal“ or something, the best way to learn is by doing. Just come up with simple things that need it. For instance, a Linux distribution that requires you to download a few drivers. That’s a really good building block right there. Gets you to understand how to navigate file paths on your computer from your terminal, how to know where to look for things and such
This is a fun game approach to learning some bash basics.
TBF ChatHPT is probably your best bet
Edit: Comment was in wrong place, refiled as op level comment.
It is not "scary". It is complicated and requires special knowlege.
I wouldn’t call it complicated, but yeah, it’s special knowledge. So is all of self hosting.
You wouldn't. A lot of tech people wouldn't. But it is. I've found this out the hard way, after spending dozens of hours trying to figure it out. You're not doing anyone any favors.
It’s not any more complicated than a GUI, it’s just that the dozens of hours you spent learning to use a GUI was a long time ago, and you don’t remember how complicated it was.
Also, you’re probably exaggerating, because dozens of hours is way longer than it should take to become proficient at the terminal. There are resources online that you can use to learn in a few hours.
This is utter nonsense. You do not need to learn to use a GUI. You just look at the available buttons and click the ones you need. And when you click them they do what they say, they don't return a "command not found" or "undefined error" with zero diagnostic information. And they work the same regardless of what OS or distro you're on.
The fact that you don't understand this is why you're not qualified to tell people that it's "not scary".
Ok, so it’s been long enough for you, that you can’t even conceive of not knowing how to use a GUI anymore. Good for you, I guess.
Self hosting is doomed until this isn't the answer.
Yeah, this whole "Linux server" thing just isn't going to take off.
Notice that it hasn't amongst mainstream consumers.
You know what self hosted projects have been successes? Plex and Home Assistant. You know what projects don't require the terminal? Plex and Home Assistant.
Notice that mainstream customers dont self host.
You're viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services. Who cares if server grade software is terminal only? Its good enough for the companies that sponsor these projects and its good enough for enterprise level users.
Yes, that's what they said.
The only lens I'm viewing this through is one that dares to imagine that the Venn diagram of "computer users savvy enough to care about privacy" isn't 100% contained within the circle of "computer users savvy with the terminal".
Quite frankly your stance that the 'average person' doesn't care, when this post is LITERALLY from an 'average person' who does, is the one that seems off base on its face.
This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person. Also im viewing this through realistic lenses, enterprise software developers fund TTY server grade software and people like you who complain about that are very rarely the type of people who contribute or make software. Yeah sorry but imagining is worthless unless you can code and your complaints come off as entitled whining.
'Average person' was in quotes because it's the language you used to describe someone not comfortable with the command line.
What? A niche technical hobby isn't popular among mainstream consumers? Wow!
Mainstream consumers don't know words "Plex" and "Home Assistant" either. There are already products that target these people. And there are products targeted at technical people. We need diversity.
Self hosting is just an extension of open source software. It's only goal is being able to run your own backends of apps to not be exploited by major companies. It's goal is not to be a niche technical hobby, if that's your goal in its own right, then get a model train or a Warhammer set.
Yes, they do lol. It's flat out weird to think that the only people who have ever heard of pirating are software developers and server admins who use the command line.
You got into Self Hosting for unreasonable ideological reasons
I got into self hosting to avoid AWS Fees
We are not the same
Good. Mainstream consumers don't understand enough about networking and computer security to be trusted to self-host anything beyond desktop applications. And even that is debatable. They're so bad at it that walled-gardens have become ubiquitous just to keep viruses from running rampant.
It isn't, self hosting just isn't for everyone, and it never will be.
Self hosting isn’t likely to ever get to the point of “plug and play”. It’s inherently incredibly flexible and different people will do different things with it. Some people just want NAS. Some people want to build a router. Some people want to have a modest compute farm that they physically own. Some people want a virtualization playground. Or pretty much anything else you can think of, or some combination thereof.
For instance, I custom built a 2-tier + optane cached NAS running proxmox, and I have a handful of old thin clients I can spin up for doing Beowulf things when I feel like it, and I also have another repurposed thin client with an old enterprise-grade SFP+ NIC running pfSense as my router that can support up to 10g (futureproofing).
No. You really don’t want to self host unless you are pretty familiar with how these services work. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up to get hacked.
I mean what's the point of "self" hosting then?
If you have to be a professional server administrator to host one of these services, then why even have a self hosting community as opposed to just a hosting community for server admins to discuss how to set and configure various services? Is this community dedicated to just discussing the uniqueness of managing a home server without a static IP?
If you want to ride a bike, you need to learn to balance on a bike. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional cyclist.
If you want to self host, you need to learn some basic administration, and that includes the terminal. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional server administrator.
You might be able to get by with some hand holdy solution that offers a few things you can do, but just like riding a scooter is much more limited than riding a bike, using a turnkey solution is much more limited than setting up your own server.
Imagine wanting to self host but refusing to learn how to forward a port. There are just some things you need to learn. Like I said in my original comment, the terminal is not as scary as people make it sound. Right now, you are the person making it sound scary.
Imagine if OP asked: "I want to repair/maintain my own car, but I don't want to open the hood or get under the car. What are my options?"
Obviously there would be some options, but those options would be very limited and not ideal. This is very similar. Self-hosting, like self-repair of a vehicle, requires some foundational knowledge and understanding of your specific hardware, usecase, and needs, as well as the knowledge and ability to bring those things to fruition. There is no single universal answer that applies to everyone, but those skills can be acquired by anyone.
I don't think self-hosting is any more doomed than self-repair of a vehicle. It's certainly not for everyone, but it can be satisfying, rewarding, enjoyable, and generally optimized for those who choose to participate.
Self hosting will always remain a hobby thing. Most people won't give the time need to properly admin their own system and an improperly admined system is a risk that you don't want to take with your precious data. I can't blame people for not doing this - there are ball games to watch, saw dust to make, kids to raise, and millions of other things to do with your free time such that you cannot do everything you might want to. Sure most people could learn to do this, but it isn't a good use of their time.
What the world needs is someone trustworthy and cheap enough to handle data for people who have better things to do. Which is why I have fastmail handle my email. I self host a lot of other things though because I don't know of anyone I can trust to do a good job for a reasonable price.
A desktop environment is a waste of resources on a system where you'll only use it to install and occasionally upgrade a few server applications. The RAM, CPU power, and electricity used to run the desktop environment could be instead powering another couple of small applications.
Selfhosting is already inefficient with computing resources just like everyone building their own separate infrastructure in a city is less efficient. Problem is infrastructure is shared ownership whereas most online services are not owned by the users so selfhosting makes sense, but requires extra efficiencies.