It’s all about privacy.
I am amazed at services offered that run rampant in the home.
My ISP offers fiber. But only if you also sign up for managed wifi where they manage your internal net…no way
I got a quote for solar power…but they must use a 3rd party cloud to manage your power and it uses eth over electrical … If you use eth over electrical already, then it does whatever it wants in your home network …no way.
Cell phones? They all go into a guest wifi…not on my home network.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.
— Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it’s nice to have computers seem “fun” again.
At least, that’s my perspective.
It’s a little bit of everything.
I haven’t really dabbled with tech much outside of work since college. This year, I started on a huge journey to change that for a couple of reasons:
- The ongoing technofascist shitshow was the biggest motivator. I want to move as far away from big tech as possible. I’m sick of passively supporting companies that supply and fund genocides, steal and cheat their way to billions, and shove AI bullshit into everything.
- Regaining control and privacy. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Complacency is part of how we got here.
- On a personal note, I quit Twitch streaming last year after a decade, and frankly just needed a new hobby.
- The Steam Deck showed me that gaming on Linux day-to-day is extremely viable after all these years. Last time I tried a Linux desktop, it was practically non-existent outside of Valve porting the Orange Box.
- It just makes for some interesting projects
I’ve done all of this in the past 5 months:
- Got a new desktop (I just needed the upgrade in general), tweaked the hell out of Windows on it, but wanted more
- Scrapped that plan and set up a CachyOS dual boot. I’ve touched Windows maybe 5 times since then. I keep it around just in case but I never use it.
- Wiped my bloated phone and installed GrapheneOS
- Started making some moves on the software side: finally bought a good VPN, moved off GMail to Tuta, started using LibreWolf and Fennec, etc etc.
- In that process, I got a cheap VPS and set up NextCloud as a Drive replacement. No idea what I was doing, security nightmare I’m sure, and I ended up scrapping that and going the full selfhost route
- Now I’m selfhosting 40ish services on a mini PC that not only replace big tech products I used to use, but also add so much more utility
This same argument goes for Linux as well. Linux allows you to turn the computer into anything you want it to be!
Recently getting back into Linux, it’s like choose your own adventure in computing. It’s been fun.
Personally I don’t enjoy setting things up. I do enjoy not being tied down to evil corporations.
Escaping vendor lock-in. It’s why people hate the cloud when it used to be the answer for everything. You make a good product that can only be used with your hardware/software, whatever, and people run from that shit because it’s abused more often than not.
Apple is the biggest example of this. Synology is getting worse and worse. Plex not far behind either.
No way, plex is completely enshitified.
I recently discovered that Plex no longer works over local network, if you lose internet service. A) you can’t login without internet access. B) even if you’re already logged in, apps do not find and recognize your local server without internet access. So, yeah, Plex is already there.
I try to explain this to the plex cultists and they usually have one of two responses;
- “Why would I be without internet?”
- “How is that helpful?”
Takes every ounce of willpower I have to not eye roll.
KODI is calling.
A lot of people that run Plex have a Jellyfin container on standby, or they’ll use Plex for friends and family and use JF at home.
Because why run one server for all your needs when you can double up, right? /s
I didn’t say it was a good idea…
What is the point of Plex? I just went straight for Jellyfin and it does everything I need and then some. Is it just that people went with Plex initially and then stuck with it as it got enshittified?
Plex has better security, federates and shares with other plex servers and generally is less hands-on for transcoding.
But, I don’t use it. I like Jellyfin. It’s free and while it may lack a few features, it isn’t worse by any measure.
generally is less hands-on for transcoding.
Yeah, I’m not gonna give you that one. It’s a single option that you toggle. Wanna use your nvidia GPU? Enable NVENC. AMD gpu/cpu? AMF. Intel CPU? QSV.
Really not that hard…
Good for her
Learn Podman since Docker has some licensing restrictions in some cases.
really? like what? i’ve been using docker completely free and unrestricted - at i think so haha
Quadlet is a game changer
It is less user friendly but theoretically more powerful and secure
The learning curve can be steep but if you have ever worked with config files it isn’t bad.
I’m curious if this community would do a community survey.
I refuse to answer that or any other question.
What’s your favorite color?
Yeah I just have ai build my uis and are slowly spinning up my own version of the web
