I am trying to use my old laptops for self-hosting. One has a 6th gen Intel Core i3 (4GB ram), the other has an 11th gen Intel Core i5 (8GB ram). I have previously tried both ubuntu server and desktop but couldn’t get it to work well. For the former I found it difficult to remote ssh and the latter I had difficulty installing Docker containers. (I’m not very good with the command line)
I would like to find an OS that is easier to setup with less of a neccesity for the command line (I would still like to learn how to use it though, I don’t want to get rid of it entirely!). I’ve heard of CasaOS, is that a good option? It seems quite easy to use. What about other alternatives?
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.
The least sanctimonious linux shithead
Name checks out
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.