Any would-be switchers, note these are 2 very different things. Self-Hosting sucks, period. For a million reasons that have nothing to do with the OS :) Trying both at once is going to be exponentially more painful than doing either alone.

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boricj 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Half-assing self-hosting sucks, regardless of the underlying platform. You tie things together with shoestrings and gum, leaving ticking timebombs and riddles to your future self.

This is the point where I'm supposed to describe my self-hosting solution on my so-called homelab, where my blog lives. I won't, because it's both stupid in smart ways and smart in stupid ways, therefore it sucks all the way.

Self-hosting is like any hobby. Half-ass it and you'll half-like it.

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newsoftheday 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Self-Hosting sucks, period.

I've been doing it for several decades now, it doesn't suck at all for me.

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GlitchRider47 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Self-hosting sucks, yes. But I'll be damned if it isn't fun. It's definitely not for everyone. Not only is it not for everyone, but it is not for everyone's families. I'm so grateful that my wife is willing to put up with me experimenting on our home network, trying out different apps, waiting for me to resolve a DNS issue because I forgot to assign a static IP to my pihole.

	▲	SchemaLoad 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I feel like it sucks a lot less than it used to. New apps like Immich work incredibly well, new tools like Tailscale make security and access to the home network easy, and LLMs make solving problems and getting ideas a lot easier.

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beart 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my experience, containerization has made self-hosting most software a breeze. The biggest pain points I've come across are related to network architecture and security. I've frequently run into issues with certificates, proxy setups, DNS, etc. It seems like much of that stems around how many modern web concepts were not designed to easily support offline-first environments. Then again, that stuff has never been my area of expertise.

	▲	SchemaLoad 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For me I've decided to just have everything behind a VPN. Tailscale and Cloudflare tunnels make this quite easy to set up, dealing with ddns and CGNAT for you. The upside is the security risk is massively reduced, an attacker would have to exploit both the VPN and the service behind it, both of these in theory being secure anyway. The downside is obviously that you require installing a VPN client to access services, but if it's only you using the server this isn't a huge deal.

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gehsty 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it’s fair to say it depends on what you are hosting and why - personal projects and curiosities, fun! Self hosting business critical data and customer data, minefield! Currently self hosting some little projects, using cloudflare tunnels to serve to the web, and it is surprisingly fun and efficient!

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kingcrimson1000 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is painful but I would say it is also rewarding as I learned a lot doing it!

	▲	kgwxd 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I love learning that stuff too, until I learn what it takes to maintain it. At least internet facing stuff. I fully gave up on email a decade ago. That alone crushed all my excitement for the general idea. I have a local media server, but it's also just my main desktop.

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Dedime 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hot take alert! As an avid self-hoster, I'd like to hear why.

Personally, I self host because the benefits I receive simply aren't available anywhere else at the level of quality I've come to expect - Jellyfin is a great media player, it's free, and I don't want to switch. Pihole provides ad protection and privacy for my whole home network. It's also free. Homeassistant is amazing, and free. Etc etc.

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Telaneo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's also free.

Only if you don't care about your time or if your media collection is tiny.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 20 TB hard drives full of Linux ISOs, but it's a hard sell on anyone who doesn't have 'dicking about with computers' as their hobby. Regular old piracy using torrents has been a easier sell in my experience, once you can get over the hurdle of getting someone familiar with using a torrent client and the relevant search bar. Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial. Getting people to use Jellyfin isn't hard. Getting someone to be the family/friend group Jellyfin sysadmin is a significantly tougher sell.

Pihole and the like is an easier sell, since it can be mostly set and forget, but it's not free unless you already have a computer which isn't doing anything, and even if you do, that computer isn't guaranteed to be one which has near-zero running costs when you factor in electricity.

The same sorts of problems apply to most things you can self-host.

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SchemaLoad 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think many advice non tech people to get in to self hosting, but there are a lot of people who do enjoy messing with computers who these articles are marketing to.

The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.

	▲	Telaneo 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I don't think many advice non tech people to get in to self hosting, but there are a lot of people who do enjoy messing with computers who these articles are marketing to. I agree, but even I, someone who does have this as a hobby and does self-host a few things, have my limits for the same reasons that the casuals do. Even when I have a computer that I can use for one more purpose, I rarely do that unless I know it will be set and forget, since having one more thing to deal with in my already overburdened life is a hard sell. > The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up. Very true. I do hope some products like that will appear, but the workflow and UX will have to be damn near perfect, something which home automation often isn't (unless you use Home Assisant and thus have it as a hobby. Funny how that works).

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bigstrat2003 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't speak for Jellyfin, as I currently use Plex. But it truly has been "set it and forget it" for me. I've never had an update break things, it just does its job and does it well.

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tamimio 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It depends, do you have the time to maintain few things, or sometimes more than “few things”? Do you have the skills or at least willing to learn? Are you willing to deal with some basic contingency planning in case some stuff goes wrong? What kind of services are you replacing, if emails, probably not worth it, storage? Definitely. Do you have a reliable internet/power combo to rely on accessing your lab remotely? Say you are traveling and want to access your NAS to get a copy of XYZ document, last thing you want is that you are unable to do so because your power is down.

So it really depends on the use case and many factors, if it works for you, great, otherwise and you are willing to pay some subscriptions, then be it.