2mo ago

Self-hosting is having a moment. Ethan Sholly knows why.

arstechnica.com

Self-hosting @slrpnk.net

sabreW4K3 @lazysoci.al

2mo ago

Self-hosting is having a moment. Ethan Sholly knows why.

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2025/05/self-hosting-is-having-a-moment-ethan-sholly-knows-why/

96 comments

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.
- 99% of people want computers to serve them, not to be fun. My SO couldn't care less how much fun I have setting up home assistant. They just want to turn on the lights.
  
  Well, yes, most people want computers to be unnoticable and boring. I agree, we need more boring tech that just does a job and doesn't bother us. That said, plenty of people find self-hosting to be fun - your SO and mine excepted, of course.
- Personally I don't enjoy setting things up. I do enjoy not being tied down to evil corporations.
  
  I do like setting things up.
  Then I realise I need to fuck around with DNS to get it working nicely.
- 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.
  
  Self-housing, Linux, vim; hell, even gardening -- they all fit this saying?axiom? pretty well.
- 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
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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  What!?! Damn. I didn't know it got that enshitty already.
- I’d say plex is up there. “Want to use your hardware and bandwidth to view your own files? Pay us!”
  
  I'm down for paying for a piece of software. I bought a lifetime subscription back in the day I feel like until recently it served me pretty well. And to be fair they are caching the movie database, providing SSL keys, epg, low speed proxy through cgnat for people, there's quite a bit too there cloud operations that they do deserve money for.
  What pisses me off is the mining of my watch habits, and the slow and enshitification of features.
  14 years of lifetime Plex pass for $75, they don't really owe me anything, But I am moving on.
  I'm slowly digging my way out of sights with algorithms, clawing my way out of Google is particularly difficult. I'm considering spinning my own Alexa with whisper
  
  Nothing wrong with having to pay for software if the prices are reasonable. It's a product like any other, with real people working on it.
- No way, plex is completely enshitified.
I wanted to ask where the border of selfhosting is. Do I need to have the storage and computing at home?
Is a cheap VPS on hetzner where I installed python, PieFed and it's Postgres database but also nginx and letsencrpt manually by mydelf and pointed my domain to it, selfhosting?
- I would say yes, it's still self-hosting. It's probably not "home labbing", but it's still you responsible for all the services you host yourself, it's just the hardware which is managed by someone else.
  Also don't let people discourage you from doing bare-metal.
  
  That's actually a good point, self hosting and home lab are similar things but don't necessarily mean the same thing
  
  Interesting distinction. I use a small managed vps, but didn't consider that self-hosting, personally. I do aspire to switch to a homelab and figure out dynamic DNS and all that one day.
- It depends who you ask (which we can already tell hehe), but I'd say YES, because you're the one running the show -- you're free to grab all of your bits and pieces at any time, and move to a different provider. That flexibility of not being locked into one specific cloud service (which can suddenly take a bad turn) is what's precious to me.
  And on a related note, I also make sure that this applies to my software-stack too -- I'm not running anything that would be annoying to swap out if it turns bad.
- It’s self hosting as long as you are in control of the data you’re hosting.
- I would say there's no value in assigning such a tight definition on self-hosting--in saying that you must use your own hardware and have it on premise.
  I would define selfhost as setting up software/hardware to work for you, when turn-key solutions exist because of one reason or another.
  Netflix exists. But we selfhost Jellyfin. Doesn't matter if its not on our hardware or not. What matters is that we're not using Netflix.
- Your stuff is still in the cloud, so I would say no. It’s better than using the big tech products, but I wouldn’t say it’s fully “self hosted”. Not that that really makes much of a difference. You’re still pretty much in control of everything, so you should be fine.
  
  Where is the tipping point though? If I have a server at my parents house, they live in Germany and I in Korea, does my dad host it then because he is paying for the electricity and the access to the internet and makes sure those things work?
- Self hosting just means maintaining your own Instance of a web service instead of paying for someone else‘s
  As long as you dont pay hetzner for an explicit fully maintained Nextcloud server, it dosent matter if the OS you‘re running it on is a VM or a bare bones server
- Why wouldn't you just use Docker or Podman
  Manually installing stuff is actually harder in a lot of cases
  
  Yeah why wouldn't you want to know how things work!
  I obviously don't know you, but to me it seems that a majority of Docker users know how to spin up a container, but have zero knowledge of how to fix issues within their containers, or to create their own for their custom needs.
  
  I did that first but that always required much more resources than doing it yourself because every docker starts it's own database and it's own nginx/apache server in addition to the software itself.
  Now I have just one Postgresql database instance running with many users and databases on it. Also just one Nginx which does all the virtual host stuff in one central place. And both the things which I install with apt and manually are set up similarly.
  I use one docker setup for firefox-sync but only because doing it manually is not documented and even the docker way I had to research for quite some time.
- Is a cheap VPS on hetzner where I installed python, PieFed and it’s Postgres database but also nginx and letsencrpt manually by mydelf and pointed my domain to it, selfhosting?
  I don't get hung up on the definitions and labels. I run a hybrid of 3 vps and one rack in the closet. I'm totally fine with you thinking that is not selfhosting or homelabbing. LOL I have a ton of fun doing it, and that's the main reason why I do it; to learn and have fun. It's like producing music, or creating bonsai, or any of the other many hobbies I have.
- Personally, I’d say no. At that point you are administering it, not hosting it yourself.
- I'd say you need storage. Once you get storage, use cases start popping up into view over time.
Learn Podman since Docker has some licensing restrictions in some cases.
- Quadlet is a game changer
  https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/quadlet-podman
  
  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.
- really? like what? i’ve been using docker completely free and unrestricted - at i think so haha
  
  I think the restrictions are just for publishing containers on Docker Hub. If you aren't doing that, you aren't impacted.
I’m curious if this community would do a community survey.
- If it didn’t ask me irrelevant personal information
  
  What’s you favorite color?
- I refuse to answer that or any other question.
  
  What’s your favorite color?
- Ethen Sholly has done surveys before on his website selfh.st
  edit: I'm an idiot
  
  Don’t be hard on yourself.
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.
Yeah I just have ai build my uis and are slowly spinning up my own version of the web

96 comments