What are the most promising projects/services aiming at making self hosting easier for everyone?
Definitely yunohost for me
CasaOS is pretty noob-friendly
How is it in terms of privacy?
completely foss afaik
I have never used it but from the website I gather that it’s an app (literally, there’s a mobile app) which enables you to remotely set up a VPS with a set of services at generic VPS hosting providers like Hetzner or DigitalOcean with the click of a few buttons.
It builds on NixOS which naturally lends itself to abstraction. They have created a pre-made NixOS configuration which configures these services to sensible defaults and provides a few highly abstract options which the user must set themselves. “Enable service xyz”, “Enable backups for services a, b, and c”.
I assume these are set using a UI; producing a JSON like this. All the generic NixOS config then needs to do is simply consumes the JSON and set the internal options accordingly. But the user doesn’t need to care about any of that, the experienced people who maintain this NixOS config do it for them.I don’t know how well it works currently but I absolutely see and love the vision. Imagine being able to deploy all the cloud services you need on your own VPS by creating a few accounts, copy pasting API tokens and then simply tapping sliders and buttons in a mobile app. I can absolutely see that becoming suitable for the masses.
I don’t use Umbrel, but it’s basically a GUI for installing Docker apps from what I can tell and looks promising.
Seems pushing a crypto agenda.
Hosting a Bitcoin node is literally the last thing I would host. Almost 600 gb of garbage transactions so you can check the 500 bytes of your own transactions without relying on external services?
Seems pushing a crypto agenda.
Most definitely, they’re not shy about that. A Bitcoin node used to be installed by default since that was their users’ main goal and the point of the project, but as their self-hosted app list grew they made all the crypto apps optional. It doesn’t bother me having the option so long as it isn’t forced (I don’t own Bitcoin). I just look for the biggest app store, which is why I’m rolling vanilla Arch and Docker Compose instead of a project like Umbrel for now.
Yunohost for me as well. My only prior self-hosting experience was installing Nextcloudpi images for raspberry pi, and it was a similar experience once I knew how to forward ports on my router etc.
It even automatically set up an email server and XMPP server by default. I don’t use XMPP and hadn’t planned on hosting my own email, but, here I am. Installing apps feels like using a mobile app store. Hosting nextcloud, freshRSS, static blog, WordPress, listmonk, wallabag, other stuff on a small ARM SBC, with plenty of resources left.
I don’t even really know how it works 😅 but I contribute on Liberapay and try to keep good backups and only install well-rated apps.
This is very close to what I’m looking for. I really liked the app store part. I’ll surely give it a try.
Other comments already pointed to some very good software solutions.
But I would argue that absolutely the biggest barrier to entry for the masses is hardware.
Restoring an old PC or making some cable spaghetti with some SBC is currently too advanced for average person.
Self-hosting for the masses would require some new form of home servers.
Something modular, where adding new components would be as easy as playing with Lego bricks.Projects like Freedom Box were attempting this 10+ years ago, or even simpler, a home server that basically sits on your powerplug. AFAIK it sort of petered out fast, at least in the public mind, and I think it’s a shame. It had potential and was even more basic than the Lego approach.
@halm I use FreedomBox or want to, but it doesn’t seem to support that much in terms of software, as I remember it once did. Perhaps I’m remembering wrong. I was hoping it would support more Fediverse server software, like some of the lighter fedi server software.
Right? Maybe the FreedomBox suite just feels scarce after the Yunohosts and the CasaOSs that have appeared in the meantime with much larger app offerings.
Nowadays people are spoilt for choice — and I’m not complaining! — so maybe there’s a market for a FreedomBox-like plug server with a Docker setup out of the box and a GUI to Docker hub?
Edit: It actually looks like CasaOS are trying for something like that with their Zimaboard single board server. I’m a little wary that the company is based in China but I’m also typing this on my Oneplus phone, so who am I to judge.
@halm I tried Yunohost, but have to admit it confused me right at the install stage. I’m getting older and it doesn’t take much. FreedomBox had issues when I installed Wordpress. Something to do with permissions, which I don’t want to change from the default Debian settings. The barrier of entry is still too high for self-hosting for most of us.
I tried yunohost for a few months and wasn’t perfectly happy with it either; the file system got too messy for me. The install isn’t the most straightforward but I got there in the second attempt 😉
@halm I’ll give it another shot. :-) I really want to support the Debian Blend FreedomBox but it may not be my best option. :(
Well, CasaOS is also Debian based, supports Docker, and the developers sell what is essentially plug computers with it pre-installed…
@halm Docker seems like a good idea:After all that what’s flatpaks are right? Apps in a docker like space, self contained?
As far as I understand it, yes. I think Flatpaks are isolated from the wider system but maybe pool dependencies to avoid redundancy, while dockers are fully sandboxed from each other?
I may be wrong, flatpaks were never really my cup of tea.
My favorite has been Sandstorm.io ever since I discovered it. Sure, it doesn’t look as pretty as the others, but it’s super easy if you use one of their free hostnames.
I thought maybe an NGO or non-profit subsidized by a gov’t (e.g. taxing ISPs or telecos) would work for stuff within a geographic region, just like allocate server space and the main benefit would be to have a knowledgeable citizenry/residents of tech stuff.
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FTP
