i am not looking to manipulate or convince anybody, just something informative in general, like “this is the bigtech world, this is the open source / selfhosted world.” any good knowledge bases, blogs, youtube channels and alike that you would recommend? the less technical, the better. it’s not about “how to install this and that” but rather “what do i need this and that for, what are the advantes and what are the downsides”. also, are there resources like that in your language (if you or your people are not english native speakers)?
also very interested in anything else you have to share regarding your personal selfhosting experience and how it may or may not affect those around you.
i’ll start: in my own experience, there are so many other things going on in people’s life, that i understand are far more important than whether their todo list is stored on their own disk or in some other part of the world. especially in the beginning, going open source / selfhosted does often feel like losing comfort, only to be left with more to take care about in return. so getting started as a non-technical person seems incredibly difficult. another thing that comes to mind is, yes i could do the selfhosting for related people and friends, and yes they would trust me with some of their data – but no i don’t want that. not because i am not willing to help, but i honestly don’t want to have access to their data, it just doesn’t feel correct.
thanks for your inputs and have a nice weekend!
I think selfhosting should be as normal as owning a car and as easy as using a phone. It’s because I think people should run the internet, not billionaires.
@libre_warrior @thelocalhostinger The fact is that we consider selfhosting somehow “special”, as opposed to “I’m just running this [ideally free & open] app that shares stuff with my friends”, is part of the problem. Damn you, IPv4 and NAT! *shakes fist*
I’ve got 1TB pictures and videos. I can either pay google a shitload of money and fear that they delte my stuff. Or I can self host immich for a fraction of the cost for electricity and a donation.
This. Why pay £6/m when, with self-hosting a Samba/NFS/NextCloud instance as part of 20 other services, I pay ~£6 a year. (Might increase drastically with Ollama or SearXNG and a GPU, but still a fraction of the corporate cost)
I have my own server, at home.
I don’t have to worry about price increases or media being removed unannounced because a license expired.
I have the physical media here or at my parents place.
You know [Burger chain]? Self hosting is making your own burger. Kinda similar ingredients, kinda looking product overall, it’s still a burger.
But you’re in control.
I liken it to hiring a plumber/electrician/carpenter vs figuring it out myself. Instead of using a website on someone else’s computer, I use websites on my own computer.
That is actually an important distinction, with the burger example you only get the “do it myself” part and some people will say “meh I can deal not getting home made burger”.
Hiring an electrician though for example. You let someone in your house. Without self hosting is like having an electrician constantly knowing what you do with the electricity, like he never leaves the house.
I haven’t really needed to, I just show them. I open up Jellyfin and explain that I put all the movies I own there so I don’t need to find the discs or pay for a service like Netflix. Or I’ll show them my OCIS setup with LibreOffice online and explain that I don’t need Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. If they ask where it runs, I point to the server on my desk.
Everyone has their own reasons for doing it, and I think they can draw their own conclusions just by seeing it in action.
How I explain Self-Hosting to the non-techies in my life: “This is me practicing my trade. As a server and systems admin, I need servers and systems under my control that I can experiment with, set up, configure, break, and fix, and self-hosting has a benefit that instead of four computers, two by my wife and two by me, each hosting its own data, I can set up a network storage device where both of us can store our data.” Any more than that, and I probably won’t go into detail, because I don’t ask my accountant friends to go into the weeds about their career and return that favour by not going into the weeds about my own. :)
“You pay for how many streaming services??? You could start building a decent DVD/BRD collection that you own forever.”
“Yea but I hate swapping disks and I watch on my phone.”
“Gather around, let me tell you the story of a fin made of jelly.”
Long ago I learned to stop convincing people to stop shooting themselves in the foot.
Coward. I always convince them to shoot themselves in the foot.
More seriously, I don’t think I will ever stop. It may not change their life significantly and immediately, but that’s not necessary. Even if it makes them just be aware, that’s enough sometimes to make a positive change. I’m all about that. The least we should do i lose hope. It’s not that black and white.
You know Google drive? You know how it doesn’t work when the internet is out? You know how we live in rural USA so the internet is out every other day?
Yeah that computer in the corner is my own Google drive that still works when the internet is out.
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I like to own the stuff I buy.
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I don’t want to pay a corporation a monthly fee to access my own data.
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I don’t want a corporation or government to have unlimited access to my stuff.
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“Does it piss you off when Google/whatever does [blank]? Yeah, me too. So I run my own versions to not have to deal with that crap. Would you like me to set you up an account on my stuff?”
I dunno…most people just look at me blankly when I ask that question.
And then I’m becoming responsible for other people’s stuff? I don’t think so.😅
I don’t.
Like a cab, but it’s your car and you take care of everything.
If you need a car only once a year when going to the airport, a cab will be cheaper. If you need to go somewhere at least once a week, driving your own car will be cheaper. Likewise, if you need only a little bit of cloud storage for your photos, free iCloud or Google Drive might be fine. If you need a whole lot of storage, self-hosting becomes cheaper.
When you take a cab, do you need to worry about maintenance, gasoline, insurance, or other things? No. The same goes for cloud storage. When you throw your photos on Google Drive, you don’t need to worry about electricity bills, security updates, or hardware maintenance.
When you drive your own car, you need to be a responsible driver and a car owner. Maintenance is your responsibility. Likewise, self-hosting means you need to be a responsible server admin.
