Gregory's ServerLearn to host your own services now. Because in the future you might not be able to discover how.
 143 comments
@cephie Great idea. Depends a lot on what you're trying to host. My intention is to make videos and blog posts about this topic soon- I've been focusing on getting around the Linux terminal in recent materials but I'm hoping to spread out a bit soon. I'd also like to host a section on my website about it but haven't done so yet. In the meantime, Awesome Selfhosted comes to mind as a good place to branch off, if not a bit verbose. https://awesome-selfhosted.net/  @paezha @SkilledAlpaca @vkc and Google is trying to become a monopoly on searches. Imagine a world where the only storage of these search results is Google and Duck, Yahoo, etc no longer work. I mean all the sites are failing as it is (esp for news archives) @vkc i really would if its not that costly to maintain a domain… till now i’m thinking about hosting a lot of stuff for myself once i bought meself a domain, maybe a hoster if my shared internet can’t host it @wolfieamel If you keep things inside a firewall you don't necessarily need a domain. For a bit more advanced way to do things with inexpensive domains, I think @notthebee did a fantastic video about this topic a while back (YouTube link): @vkc oh, huh i’ll look into it later; although if its local, i do have a thinkpad that slowly becomes NAS / Plex server mix at this point… they’re quite old though as they are a 2nd gen intel— but they serve well so~ I might take in the challenge to get that classic internet again despite how things are going as per lately though (hence the domain and stuff) we’ll see about that >~<  @wolfieamel @vkc The pi was a birthday present, but I did pay for the micro-SD card. The only other cost is the ADSL I pay for anyway and a tiny amount of electricity. It's not exactly fast, but a pi3 or 4 with a USB drive and a faster upload speed would improve that a lot. Since folks have asked, I'll elaborate a bit. I believe Google/Microsoft/OpenAI/et al will increasingly work to strip search results which provide alternatives to their own products, and that includes self-hosted media. I've seen this when I've attempted to cover using RSS feeds instead of YouTube subscriptions- I have no reason to trust Google to surface Google alternatives in good faith.  @vkc You have no reason to trust them..:and you have ample reason to distrust them. They’re not an unknown quantity. They have a track record.  @vkc Back when I was on #Facebook, multiple times I had posts about my personal #Nextcloud server taken down as "spam". There will come a point where you ask internet-oracle-of-choice "how do I self-host a Netflix alternative" and they will intentionally give you bad advice in order to discourage you. That point is coming sooner rather than later, and we need to train *an entire generation* of internet users how to get out of this trap. That's *our* work to do, RIGHT NOW.  @vkc I really need to figure out how to get the movies on the NAS to end up on the TV without going through a Chromecast... @socketwench LibreELEC is really good at this. I personally spun up Jellyfin though, there's a supported Kodi plugin and it handles everything like a champ. Pretty sure a spare Pi could handle it (I hope to cover this in a video soon, just need to finish the damn basement first). @vkc House stuff takes *forever* especially if you're doing it alone. I do have a miniPC I got from FreeGeek with LibreELEC on it. I should see about using that someday. @socketwench It's pretty great- I've got at least three videos scripted in a series I'm calling "So you want to self host your media", but I really want to do it like a cheesy infomercial and not a typical episode. @vkc @socketwench I second Jellyfin, it's pretty cool. Depending on what you have you can use several things as a client to consume that stuff: am app on your TV itself, a Kodi box, some streaming box, an HTPC and probably more. I went with an Nvidia Shield.  Start here: https://libreelec.tv/ Is a simple Linux installation with KODI. It will "just work" when installed on a NUC and hooked up to your tv. Then also check out Jellyfin.org to setup a server to share your media on your network. After you have libreelec and jellyfin, you can install a jellyfin video add-on into KODI. https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi/ A remote that works 'out of the box' Rii Mini K25 ~$30 https://www.ebay.com/itm/196361631077 @socketwench @vkc If you have a "smart tv" or use a plug-in device like apple, amazon, google, roku there is likely a Jellyfin app you can install through their store. Though I recommend the libreelec/kodi way as its not a device tracking everything you do =) Lastly, if you do go libreelec/kodi/nuc you will be able to control kodi well with the remote I mentioned, but... not your TV. This is because of HDMI CEC support, this can be solved with a USB device, details here: https://kodi.wiki/view/CEC  @tehstu @socketwench @vkc Jellyfin isn't, but the smart tv itself is, as are the devices sold by apple, amazon, google, roku, etc @miah @socketwench @vkc well, but it would be the same with a Kodi device connected to HDMI, right? Sorry to nit pick, I'm just trying to understand what additional tracking might be at play. I've turned off device and Roku picture scanning, for instance. @tehstu @socketwench @vkc kodi is a open source application. Its not tracking anything. If a device is hooked up to a smart tv through hdmi its possible your tv is doing automatic content recognition still and collecting all that data. If you really want to limit what can be collected, ditch the smart tv, go buy a used display from a thrift store. @miah @socketwench @vkc Gotcha, thank you! Yeah, I've turned all that nonsense off. Assuming Roku honors the setting. @socketwench @vkc Jellyfin is my go-to choice since it's FOSS, but people seem to like Plex as well. You can point the libraries at the NAS directories and then use their apps to play on pretty much anything. I have the Jellyfin app on my Nvidia Shield and it works perfectly.  Also, important to emphasise you don't need to be a techy person to host your own services any more. There are lots of independent managed hosting companies which will do the techy stuff for you, but you own and run the service and can move it to a different host if you want to. Apologies for plug, but I run a website trying to encourage and help non-technical people to set up their own online sites and services at: @vkc that might be hot take and there's a lot to work to be done but this is why I am really convinced by NixOS style ecosystems where all the expertise knowledge on how to self host X software is crowdsourced by many smart people and *packaged* into a usable to a non-expert developer audience In the future, I hope to see more docs of how to run "personal services in a box" or "org services in a box"   @vkc OpenAI does this now with AI related questions. I used it, very early, to help build a site using Generative AI and parameter optimization. I would have never been able to do it without ChatGPT teaching me and then in the next few updates they nerfed the ability to get it to teach you about practical AI programming (LSTM training even).  @vkc I've seen a lot of people talk about self-hosting and some amazing tutorials on setting up everything, but I feel like they leave the important part of how are you going to the internet. The DNS part is always left out most of the time. I might be wrong but don't you need a DNS provider if you don't have a static IP. I want to self-host but I get confused on the DNS part, for example, "example. com" can point to a static IP but if your IP changes often, then what to do at that point.  @pikachu_sensei @vkc you can use a provider who offers dynamic DNS (ddns) and configure your router to regularly update it. You'll need to open a port in your firewall, and set up a port forwarding rule. If you're using CloudFlare as your name server, you can run a tunnel which will let you mask your IP address behind theirs. They've got a container that works really well for docker compose stacks, DDoS protection, and there's no need to open a port on your router. @vkc The last time I asked The Internet Oracle (https://internetoracle.org/) something, I got told off for not groveling enough, and now I think I owe them something ironic? 😄 @vkc that's already happening when you Google stuff for torrents and such, usually the first results are bulk generated pages where they offer you download or stream stuff but then either there's no download button or they point to "legit" streaming services. Most of the piracy related stuff is artificially downranked specially for keywords like "torrent" or "download".  @vkc The list of #GAFAM alternatives should be spread widely. One list I know was prism break. I am not sure if its updated but it is a good starting place https://prism-break.org/en/all/#media-publishing @vkc oh yeah I'm expecting this too. It's why I've been looking into alternative ways to construct a feed if they ever pull RSS support. Even been looking into newsletters.  @vkc I'm scared of that sort of thing as well. It would be great when decentralised search is finally perfected.
 @vkc I want to self host a search engine that uses its own index, would be nice if the index was federated also @thanius That would be a fantastic project. I know of plenty of self-hosted search options but none that are so comprehensive. @vkc Yeah, I was excited over Searxng until I read that it was just a meta searcher, still reliant on other engines.  @galaxis Yeah, YaCy is not worth the hassle. I imagine that there will be search engines in the future based off interests, for example technology. Then when I use that engine I get mostly the results I expect, and the rest should federate over the network. Users should be able to report and score the results which would improve quality over time. @vkc While I appreciate this idea, we have T-Mobile 5G home internet, which essentially disallows any kind of home hosting at all. That could be another vector for discouraging the behavior.  @tylerknowsnothing@mastodon.social @vkc@linuxmom.net Not really, actually. Get a Mesh VPN on there and it will work just fine. @tylerknowsnothing You can host at home inside the network if you'd like - you don't have to expose everything to the outside world. @vkc Well, there’s that. I do have a Mac mini running Plex and a NAS for backups and file share. I just can’t get Plex outside and my daughter can’t host a Minecraft instance as there’s a double NAT and no port forwarding on the T-mo box.  @vkc and I would also add, learn to take notes and to manage your knowledge for your future self.   @vkc I'm not really web savvy (I'm just a shite musician) but one of the things people can do is have a page on their website of links to other similar material/sites/allies. There was a time before search engines really kicked off where people found other websites through such pages.  but there's the issue of email. everybody will tell you about email. in the end, it's about scalability of your own living. do you really want to be working every waking hour? that's why i paid proton; because i like to sleep. but now i know i paid for a bait & switch. if anything, your comment highlights something more profound: WE NEED TO OWN THE MEANS OF OUR DIGITAL PRODUCTION that may mean, cooperatives. Proton switched to a non-profit model but it's still top-down. @vkc seriously, give me a cooperative tech company that runs my blogs, mastodon, email, chat. let me pay a membership AND sit on the people's board and have a vote as co-owning member of the service. but giving money to a top-down corporatist organization? i don't give a shit if they are a non-profit. look at what proton did: they turned themselves into a non-profit and now they're pushing AI and crypto. like... WTAF?!?! who made these decisions? i don't have a say? fuck this.  @vkc We need to regulate them. And we need to produce our own alternatives, just like we used to before they existed and stole that from us.  @vkc “They” made email so much more complicated than it was in the 1990s. It's just horrible, and I don't have the time to deal with it. @vkc Forbidden secret knowledge... Time to establish "underground" info sharing channels too. @vkc I’m not sure if anyone has replied already with this site, but there’s a long list of self hostable softwares and applications at https://selfh.st/apps/  @vkc are you still advocating for people not to host mastodon like on your video? something something more load to the network #i-totally-agree-tbh@vkc I mostly use nowadays I find nowadays little to no useful information straight from google search) and I'm surprised that somebody tries to do so  @vkc @vkc god I'm so thankful I found you out here in the internet wild, been quietly despairing of learning things fast enough before they make internet learning impossible |
@vkc and ask people near by eager to help