Self hosting is doomed until this isn’t the answer.
Comment on What OS should I use for self-hosting that doesn't require extensive terminal knowledge?
hperrin@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
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.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Yeah, this whole “Linux server” thing just isn’t going to take off.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
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.
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
Good. Mainstream consumers don’t understand enough about networking and computer security to be trusted to self-host anything beyond desktop applications.
tauren@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
What? A niche technical hobby isn’t popular among mainstream consumers? 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.
aMockTie@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Imagine if OP asked: “I want to repair 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. Not for everyone, but enjoyable and generally optimized for those who participate.
irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 hours ago
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.
baduhai@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
It isn’t, self hosting just isn’t for everyone, and it never will be.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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 running pfSense as my router that can support up to 10g (futureproofing).
hperrin@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
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.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
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?
hperrin@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
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.
VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 hours ago
I guess you could install cockpit (via Terminal, sorry, but it’s pretty straightforward and there are good guides). After that, you could use the cockpit web interface to deploy docker/podman containers. It’s a bit clunky sometimes, but it does the job purely in UI.
You can also manage updates, backups, etc via cockpit if you install the required modules.
As base, I’d use any stable Linux distro that’s reccomended for server use.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you’re afraid of t
The least sanctimonious linux shithead
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Name checks out
Mavytan@feddit.nl 11 hours ago
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
Nasan@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
This is a fun game approach to learning some bash basics.
dgdft@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I highly recommend O’Reilly’s Learning the Bash Shell in paperback form: www.oreilly.com/library/view/…/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.
Mavytan@feddit.nl 5 hours ago
Thanks for your reply. I agree the ‘why’ is important, for me that usually makes things more intuitive
hperrin@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
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:
www.terminaltutor.com
Mavytan@feddit.nl 5 hours ago
Thanks for the very practical resources!
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
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. Get you to understand how to navigate file paths on your computer from your terminal, how to know where to look for things and such
RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
TBF ChatHPT is probably your best bet