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.
deleted by creator
No. They just want to buy an Apple home thingy 🥹
deleted by creator
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.
hardcode all the ip’s!
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.
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
People are looking to reclaim their agency and autonomy, we over relied on corpos and they used that as opportunity to price gouge us.
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.
even if you’re already logged in, apps do not find and recognize your local server without internet access.
You set your server in those app’s settings to not use direct connect and thus they are being routed through Plex’s servers
When you select your Plex libraries from the drop-down there are usually 2 options, one will be the local IP and say (direct), that’s always the best choice if you’re able
I just turned off my Internet connection to my Chromecast and tested, no issues with accessing my media
Nice! How are you using a chromecast without internet? Mine screams at me to get a google account.
Chromecast w/ google TV, sorry, so like a fire stick but different branding. Once you’re signed into apps on it it’ll remember you cuz it’s a full android device
How do you get past the first screen that asks for a google account?
I think they’re saying they’ve already signed into a Google account, downloaded play store apps, and set everything up. Afterwards, they have disconnected the Chromecast from the internet and successfully continued to access their self hosted content.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
I’ll take another look, but I didn’t see any such setting when I was trying to diagnose. And I haven’t changed any Plex settings since the last time we had an internet outage and it worked properly, just a month or two ago.
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 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…
Plex has better security, federates and shares with other plex servers and generally is less hands-on for transcoding.
Regarding security, it’d be interesting to see how secure it actually is. Yeah, the individual endpoints might be protected better, but is Plex the company maybe a single point of failure?
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…
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.
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
Yeah I’m increasingly unwilling to put up with subscriptions that arent reasonable. If you’re selling a piece of software, I’ll consider paying for it. I love foundry for that, its a vtt that I bought and it just works. They update it, but I don’t expect or demand updates beyond keeping it working. And if they were to offer more features in the future with a new model I’d consider paying for the new model.
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.
The shitty part is taking features people already had access to and locking them away all while spying on you.
No way, plex is completely enshitified.
Truly awesome that this hobby is getting coverage! I’m very very lazy when it comes to self-hosting, by far my largest project was moving off Spotify and archiving all my playlists.
Rotating 3 API keys for spotdl and a YTP free trial for that sweet sweet 256kbps AAC then Musicbrainz Picard to label correctly all the music (automatic was nearly almost always wrong), then automating rebuilding the m3u8 playlists followed by the insane work of correcting all the little imperfections. Must’ve taken me like 2-3 weeks of just working on it most of the day.
But the result? A proper offline music library with all my main playlists with each song at the proper position and order in my playlists with the correct (Spotify) metadata using correct versions of the songs in at least 256kbps AAC (and many cases FLAC and where available non-vinyl hi-res).
Tossed on an old dell workstation I got for £50. Hosting navidrome where my JF, Qbittorrent-nox and Immich live. Using symfonium on my phone. Can access remotely via OpenVPN. Couldn’t be happier.
Dude Navidrome is so great. I hooked my my decades worth of music collection up to it and now I can stream b-side tracks and indie bands that weren’t on Spotify. Plus when I hit random I know it’s actually random and not some algo to sell the newest slop that Spotify is pushing.
I didn’t think I’d get as much of a kick out of knowing that my random shuffle is truly random, but I do.
Self hosting music that I purchased is a really liberating feeling
I grew out of just about everything in my old digital library so it’s been long gone, but I didn’t realize just how much stuff I had on my old bandcamp account already. Grabbed all of that, bought a bunch more, obtained everything else from my Tidal rotations and slapped it all into Navidrome.
The initial setup is definitely a pain but the payoff has been tremendous. Not financially though - I spent more buying new shit from small artists than I would spend on a streaming service in a year. But that goes so much further for them than streaming does anyway.
Do you need to buy it again next year? Great investment!
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?
Not relevant
I refuse to answer that or any other question.
What’s your favorite color?
Learn Podman since Docker has some licensing restrictions in some cases.
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.
The worst part about quadlets, IMO, is that they don’t use the same key words as podman run does. So turning a working podman container into a quadlet can be challenging.
Podlet is really useful in this area.
really? like what? i’ve been using docker completely free and unrestricted - at i think so haha
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.
Good for her
Yeah I just have ai build my uis and are slowly spinning up my own version of the web
