i am not looking to manipulate or convince anybody, just something informative in general, like “this is the bigtech world, this is the open source / selfhosted world.” any good knowledge bases, blogs, youtube channels and alike that you would recommend? the less technical, the better. it’s not about “how to install this and that” but rather “what do i need this and that for, what are the advantes and what are the downsides”. also, are there resources like that in your language (if you or your people are not english native speakers)?
also very interested in anything else you have to share regarding your personal selfhosting experience and how it may or may not affect those around you.
i’ll start: in my own experience, there are so many other things going on in people’s life, that i understand are far more important than whether their todo list is stored on their own disk or in some other part of the world. especially in the beginning, going open source / selfhosted does often feel like losing comfort, only to be left with more to take care about in return. so getting started as a non-technical person seems incredibly difficult. another thing that comes to mind is, yes i could do the selfhosting for related people and friends, and yes they would trust me with some of their data – but no i don’t want that. not because i am not willing to help, but i honestly don’t want to have access to their data, it just doesn’t feel correct.
thanks for your inputs and have a nice weekend!
“You pay for how many streaming services??? You could start building a decent DVD/BRD collection that you own forever.”
“Yea but I hate swapping disks and I watch on my phone.”
“Gather around, let me tell you the story of a fin made of jelly.”
I say, I don’t pay for Netflix, but I’m able to stream whatever I want. I do the same with books. And audiobooks.
Everyone has experienced an AWS / Google Cloud / Azure outage or has had a service - you are happy to use switching to (more expensive) subscription service. That’s two things that are not going to happen to self-hosters (except the outage thing, but you can actually do something about it when it happens).
You know [Burger chain]? Self hosting is making your own burger. Kinda similar ingredients, kinda looking product overall, it’s still a burger.
But you’re in control.
And the one you make at home is always better anyway. Just requires more labor.
I haven’t really needed to, I just show them. I open up Jellyfin and explain that I put all the movies I own there so I don’t need to find the discs or pay for a service like Netflix. Or I’ll show them my OCIS setup with LibreOffice online and explain that I don’t need Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. If they ask where it runs, I point to the server on my desk.
Everyone has their own reasons for doing it, and I think they can draw their own conclusions just by seeing it in action.
I just explain how when you watch Netflix, you use their computers, that’s why it costs money. You could just use your own computer at home but it takes some setup.
Just link them the story of a Dad getting locked out of his Google account after sending a picture of his child to the Doctor as part of remote care.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/22/google-csam-account-blocked
The point being they can fuck up your life on a whim and don’t care about the harm they will cause because your one out of millions.
I just tell them I run a private cloud. It’s so much easier because they understand in general “cloud equals internet”
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I like to own the stuff I buy.
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I don’t want to pay a corporation a monthly fee to access my own data.
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I don’t want a corporation or government to have unlimited access to my stuff.
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How I explain Self-Hosting to the non-techies in my life: “This is me practicing my trade. As a server and systems admin, I need servers and systems under my control that I can experiment with, set up, configure, break, and fix, and self-hosting has a benefit that instead of four computers, two by my wife and two by me, each hosting its own data, I can set up a network storage device where both of us can store our data.” Any more than that, and I probably won’t go into detail, because I don’t ask my accountant friends to go into the weeds about their career and return that favour by not going into the weeds about my own. :)
I don’t.
I don’t have to worry about price increases or media being removed unannounced because a license expired.
I have the physical media here or at my parents place.
Depending on reliability and stability of the local internet and power, you want to have your stuff available. Ranging from documents and photos up to your libary of everything else. Everything has pros and cons and what things you’re fine with.
Most of the time, all news are doing the part of “why it’s bad to rely on big corp”…
Explain why you care about it, usually if the people trust you, they will share your opinion
I have my own server, at home.
I normally tell it straight from why I got interested on it: “I like my stuff being mine”
