I love self-hosting a bunch of apps I use, so I don’t have to rely on anyone but my ISP for my digital life. Jellyfin, Immich, forgejo, memos and more.
But I know this isn’t for everyone. I just recently spent about 3 hours doing routine maintenance and fixing an issue (I caused) and I know not everyone is into doing that kind of thing.
I also wonder what it would take to get more people into this self-hosting thing. I.e., to get them off of subscription streaming services, Google, etc…, so they can own their own data, stop feeding the machine and for the general betterment of humanity. What would the world be like if half of all adults self-hosted their own services? Or even 25%?
So, for discussion, is increasing the number of self hosters a good idea? How can we make help that process along?
Edit: Fixed typos
I don’t think self hosting is average person territory at all.
I noticed 2 services out of dozens weren’t working last week and restarted their docker containers when I got home. Working again! Easy.
Nope. They only work on local LAN. Turns out IPv6 wasn’t working so I had a heck of a time tracking that down.
Home assistant kept giving me errors about my reverse proxy not being trusted, but all the settings were correct. Tried adding IPv6 addresses too, but never got that working. The only thing that worked was change the network interface from Ethernet to wireless.
There are a LOT of gremlins in selfhosting. It’s a fun hobby and rewarding, but definitely not for everyone.
Totally make sense. But, can you imagine a way for a company / non-profit to make it easier for people not able / willing to learn to fix things themselves?
My thought is it could happen, if structured correctly to keep the public good as its aim.
Hmmmm. We’ve had single click LAMP installs way back in the early 00’s. Heck, web servers were a single check box in OSX. It’s just gotten really complicated since then.
Data centers work great because tech and staff work together in proximity to keep things smooth. To decentralized a data center …
I’d start with a VPN; without which, you’d have too many unknowns. I’d have local user space (probably a VM or docker environment) linked to a remote auto-magically configured proxy server and network infrastructure. (A lot of people do this anyway with wire guard or the like) Complete automation is the key here.
Users would install apps from docker (preconfigured) and the environment automatically establishes the VPN and sends port data and settings to the proxy service. DNS/fail2ban/security is set up, and goes live in a minute or two. Of course that wouldn’t work for things like Pihole or adguard.
User is responsible for disk/CPU, service provider for networking, well except ISP stuff. But anything average-user-easy will have to be mostly prepackaged for ease of use.
Oh, and if there are things that go wrong, clear explanations are essential. Things like “could not bind 0.0.0.0:80” could be “Hey dimwit, you already used port 80 for XXXX program. Pick something else!”
Or, you know, a script could do that.
Yes! I think my question is: Is there a reason for a business to ever take on that hurclean task? Could they break even after developing everything you described and then selling Support as a service. And would more of the people pay to get away from the big tech companies?
I’m not actively doing any of this, I don’t work for any company in this space, but I wish I could see a way to make this happen.
I imagine there is money to be made. The big hurdle is initial development of the customer’s deployment app and the proxy/security location. But once those two work, a one time purchase or subscription could start bringing in revenue.
I foresee scalability and bandwidth to be a hurdle if you have 35,000 users running on average 10 apps. This setup would automatically double needed bandwidth by delivering content on the web and communication through VPN. Spitballing, but caching (if possible) would help, video like jellyfin would hurt pretty bad, but then again that sort of isn’t selfhosting anymore.
Oh, and it’d have to be cheaper then just buying a VPS. It’s a potential business, but trapped in a tight box of competition. Keep in mind your #1 client, those who rely on corporate solutions, would need a reason to switch and understand what they are doing. My parents aren’t going to jump ship from their walled garden because AI stole their eclipse photos.
Just disable IPv6 like most people and move on /s (kinda)