Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Interesting, so if you got hardware and it came with guides, what kind of guides would you want? I would assume something layered. At the top is just "I want to install these 5 apps and use them, I don't care how it works" and in the middle is "I'm ready to SSH into the router and create some VLANs for fun" at the bottom is something like "I want to flash my own firmware with appropriate certificates for secure boot and my own root chain of trust on the server hardware".
The guides, basically a quick and dirty walkthrough on setting it up, hopefully a few explanations about things, and a handful of common troubleshooting tips. Also pointers to a handful of communities that have helpful info in case something obscure pops up.
Basically, teach a man how to fish, as opposed to giving him a couple.
I think a lot of people who would otherwise dabble with a DIY home server never try because it's pretty technical (beyond typical 'build a pc' stuff) so I think the education that would come with the hardware would be appreciated by many. Help them get their foot in the door by making the dive a little less scary. Nothing too over the top but point them to the places where people hang out discussing the more technical crap for when that day comes
I could see this being a use case for a NixOS deployment where your company manages the configuration file and versioning of the system, as well as providing support. Over time, I’d you’re diligent about building documentation based off of each support request, you’ll end up with a personalized guide. And if your customer decides take a break or quit entirely, they have a configured system that doesn’t lock them in into something too esoteric.
Disclaimer: I only know of Nix, never used it because I just don’t manage that many machines to be worth my while to learn it.
Hard agree. In fact, I think there’s a market for JUST the guides. It’s true that there’s a TON of guides out there already, from old blogs to YouTube, but the issue is: all of them start or end with: “your use case might differ, so perhaps this solution isn’t for you.” Or “make sure this setup is compatible with your specific hardware”
For example: I want to set up some sort of backup/cloud storage type system. Well there’s about 1400 ways to accomplish that. I can easily just grab one and go, but I’ll always wonder- should I have done this a different way? Would my life be easier/more secure if I chose a different set up?
So offering hardware that is compatible with whatever “stack” of services included would be a huge plus. Sorta like getting a raspberry pi and following a specific raspberry pi tutorial- you know the issues you get aren’t gonna be due to incompatibility.
I think it really boils down to the scale of one’s home lab- are you just tinkering to get some skills and make something cool? Or are you hoping to do something much much bigger? Different software solutions fit those extremes differently.
Sorry, got off rambling there. I guess I’ve been down the home lab hardware/software wormhole for too long these last few weeks.
Not at all, I found your comment insightful. What you're describing to me sounds more like a business of consulting with people rather than getting access to a knowledge base. One of the things I'm curious to learn is if there is a body of people out there that give up with self-hosting because they don't want to learn everything, but just want to create something that works, and our resource are optimized for training professionals.
I’ve thought more on this yesterday, and I think my issue is-
I don’t want something that ‘just works’, I want to BUILD something that ‘just works’
The distinction is that I don’t want to buy premade solutions. I want to make them. Not because of the customizability, but because the fun is in the building. Think Lego- hundreds of people build the exact same product in the end, but why are they sold in pieces? Just assemble the damn things and sell them complete (with markup). You think more people wanna buy that?? I’d bet against it.