Yes, #SelfHosting is hard.
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Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, and it can be cost-effective, depending on what you're hosting. But if you aren't going into it with prior experience as a system administrator, it's going to hurt.
I wrote a whole book about how to do this the hard way. It's written that way so you learn how much work it all takes, but also how to do it well.
In my view, the primary purpose of a home lab is learning and experimentation. That's a different goal than self-hosting to avoid the cloud.
But honestly, this is just a very nerdy iteration of the fundamental rationale for communities: the pooling of resources to benefit all.
We could imagine a world in which communities (defined however you like) entrust their data to stewards they know, and all invest in the maintenance of equipment and services. We can imagine such a world, but of course the human effort required to build it is far greater than simply paying for a service with a modest monthly fee—and your privacy.
So both things are true. We cannot expect everyone to manage their own digital infrastructure to build a better world, but managing our digital infrastructure is probably necessary to build a better world.
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Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, and it can be cost-effective, depending on what you're hosting. But if you aren't going into it with prior experience as a system administrator, it's going to hurt.
I wrote a whole book about how to do this the hard way. It's written that way so you learn how much work it all takes, but also how to do it well.
In my view, the primary purpose of a home lab is learning and experimentation. That's a different goal than self-hosting to avoid the cloud.
But honestly, this is just a very nerdy iteration of the fundamental rationale for communities: the pooling of resources to benefit all.
We could imagine a world in which communities (defined however you like) entrust their data to stewards they know, and all invest in the maintenance of equipment and services. We can imagine such a world, but of course the human effort required to build it is far greater than simply paying for a service with a modest monthly fee—and your privacy.
So both things are true. We cannot expect everyone to manage their own digital infrastructure to build a better world, but managing our digital infrastructure is probably necessary to build a better world.
@mttaggart HomeLabbing was a way to practice things at home that I didn't have time for (or managers didn't approve of) at work. Since then it has definitely evolved into "avoiding the cloud" where I can which is fun too.
Struggling with the hardware prices now though. I'm having to get far more creative.
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Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, and it can be cost-effective, depending on what you're hosting. But if you aren't going into it with prior experience as a system administrator, it's going to hurt.
I wrote a whole book about how to do this the hard way. It's written that way so you learn how much work it all takes, but also how to do it well.
In my view, the primary purpose of a home lab is learning and experimentation. That's a different goal than self-hosting to avoid the cloud.
But honestly, this is just a very nerdy iteration of the fundamental rationale for communities: the pooling of resources to benefit all.
We could imagine a world in which communities (defined however you like) entrust their data to stewards they know, and all invest in the maintenance of equipment and services. We can imagine such a world, but of course the human effort required to build it is far greater than simply paying for a service with a modest monthly fee—and your privacy.
So both things are true. We cannot expect everyone to manage their own digital infrastructure to build a better world, but managing our digital infrastructure is probably necessary to build a better world.
@mttaggart it's only difficult in the beginning. Labbing things out and having that experience in a ton of scenarios is perhaps one of the biggest features of tech career success for me.
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Yes, #SelfHosting is hard. It can be an enjoyable hobby, and it can be cost-effective, depending on what you're hosting. But if you aren't going into it with prior experience as a system administrator, it's going to hurt.
I wrote a whole book about how to do this the hard way. It's written that way so you learn how much work it all takes, but also how to do it well.
In my view, the primary purpose of a home lab is learning and experimentation. That's a different goal than self-hosting to avoid the cloud.
But honestly, this is just a very nerdy iteration of the fundamental rationale for communities: the pooling of resources to benefit all.
We could imagine a world in which communities (defined however you like) entrust their data to stewards they know, and all invest in the maintenance of equipment and services. We can imagine such a world, but of course the human effort required to build it is far greater than simply paying for a service with a modest monthly fee—and your privacy.
So both things are true. We cannot expect everyone to manage their own digital infrastructure to build a better world, but managing our digital infrastructure is probably necessary to build a better world.
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange I've been self-hosting for the past 25 years (starting on my uncle's Pentium 1), and I currently self-host basically every service I use, so I'm a bit of an outlier.
But I don't think that self-hosting is really as hard as many think. Or, better, I don't think that the "starter pack" is that hard to achieve.
By "starter pack" I mean something like a nano VPS with a public IP for $5/month. A Docker image for Searxng for a search engine, a PiHole DNS, a WriteFreely blog, perhaps a GoToSocial container, all behind an nginx reverse proxy.
Sure, it has a bit of learning curve, but it's probably feasible by anyone who has used a command line.
For anything more complex, I agree, the idea of "delegated trusted stewards" is probably the most scalable. But if we keep repeating that self-hosting is always hard then most of the people who don't have a "trusted pal" will stay on big tech.
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