Hi everybody, I wrote this piece and it might seem a little half-baked, but I’ll never get it going if I don’t throw it out there.
Let me know what you think, thanks and selfhosting ftw.
Maybe you should join forces with YuNoHost. It let peoples selfhost on a Raspberry Pi or any old computer. Can be a “when I start it spare board only visible at home”.
They already have a lot of apps packages that are 1 click to install. Maybe you can discuss to propose an option in their package script to reduce network to the current machine?
The only downside to this approach is that their solution is targeted at being an entire OS. So I suspect most of the work would be to extract the app management from the rest?
One issue I have with your idea is that most open source servers/app are designed to be run on Linux right? Not every users use it on their main machine. You also talk a lot about docker… does it work on Windows? I mean WSL sounds like a nightmare to manage with script, for other peoples. From my point of view, YuNoHost solution is easy enough for a layman, and they will be happy not to break their main PC, have access from their phone, … even if only at home.
Thanks a lot for bringing yunohost up, this looks very very interesting. I will bring it up there.
When it comes to docker, I think at least Mac would be close to Linux (at least from my experience in my previous job – there are some integration issues, but managable I think). Windows I have no idea to be honest, could be a nightmare. For me the benefits of docker seem to be: isolation from the rest of the machine, and that pretty much every selfhostable app has a docker compose file.
Great idea, i really hope we see more of that type of local/selfhosting for average folks, its really the only way to save the internet from just being another corporate censorship heavy advertising platform.
As a non technical person, I think any tool that would make local hosting easier for laypeople like myself is great! I hope everything works out for you and localhostinger becomes a thing. I particularly like the “The app store idea” version a lot!
There are a few apps that I think fit this use case really well.
Languagetool is a spelling and grammer checker that has a server client model. Libreoffice now has built in languagetool integration, where it can acess a server of your choosing. I make it access the server I run locally, since archlinux packages languagetool.
Another is stirling-pdf. This is a really good pdf manipulation program that people like, that comes as a server with a web interface.
Thanks, I’ll check languagetool. stirling pdf already has a desktop client, although I don’t know if it offers the same functionality (but I would expect it).
ive been going back to basics the last few years after years of messing around with self hosted stuff for a while. i just like the simplicity of the files being local and not worrying about logins or needing to be iconnected to my home network or needing remote access etc.
plain text markdown files for note taking. keepass for passwords, which is just a single file. instead of using jellyfin to watch movies i usually just open a file browser. m3u playlists for listening to music with mpv. then syncthing for syncing all that between devices.
something i want to do soon is to run Radicale/calDAV locally on each device and then have syncthing sync the changes instead of needing every device to talk to a central calDAV server. DecSync is another option for this kind of thing i think
for bookmark syncing im currently using Floccus with the webDAV server thats running on my synology, but i would like get that webDAV server running locally with syncthing at some point as well
mainly if its something that i use daily i want to try and get the files to always be stored locally, then other things that i might only use 2 or 3 times i week i dont mind doing self hosted stuff
I also love the “files over app” approach, I am doing it more and more for simple stuff like (habit-) tracking. With the tempo that applications become outdated or even obsolete, I think this is something very powerful.
I think your radicale/caldav approach is interesting. Would you then also run radicale on your phone? Or simply not have the calendar on your phone? Would syncthing only sync in your home network too?
the phone part would the tricky bit. i think it should be doable using Termux on Android to run it. Termux has a “boot” plugin that should start Radicale every time the phone is turned on, but whether it will run reliably is another question.
Syncthing runs a discovery server that helps nodes/devices find each other when you are away from your home network, so it should still sync in most cases. on some routers, if it cant get around the NAT then files will be synced using Syncthing’s relay server, but you have the option to turn both of those off if you want either