Hi everybody, I wrote this piece and it might seem a little half-baked, but I’ll never get it going if I don’t throw it out there.
Let me know what you think, thanks and selfhosting ftw.
I really like the idea.
syncthing is a strong recommendation for this. Itll start manually on my host. and then simply sync my files semiautomatically whithout the need of having to run my rpi all the time especially if I still use it to experiment.
Nice, thanks for the syncthing use case.
Great idea, i really hope we see more of that type of local/selfhosting for average folks, its really the only way to save the internet from just being another corporate censorship heavy advertising platform.
There’s a use case for this but who knows how big this niche is, and ultimately that’s what will determine success or failure.
As a non technical person, I think any tool that would make local hosting easier for laypeople like myself is great! I hope everything works out for you and localhostinger becomes a thing. I particularly like the “The app store idea” version a lot!
There are a few apps that I think fit this use case really well.
Languagetool is a spelling and grammer checker that has a server client model. Libreoffice now has built in languagetool integration, where it can acess a server of your choosing. I make it access the server I run locally, since archlinux packages languagetool.
Another is stirling-pdf. This is a really good pdf manipulation program that people like, that comes as a server with a web interface.
Thanks, I’ll check languagetool. stirling pdf already has a desktop client, although I don’t know if it offers the same functionality (but I would expect it).
Not sure how many services can be hosted in that way and remain useful. But it’s an interesting idea overall! For myself, I could run a Git forge on local PC. Since I’m the only user, and I just keep my scripts there, it is fine not to run 24/7.
Maybe you should join forces with YuNoHost. It let peoples selfhost on a Raspberry Pi or any old computer. Can be a “when I start it spare board only visible at home”.
They already have a lot of apps packages that are 1 click to install. Maybe you can discuss to propose an option in their package script to reduce network to the current machine?
The only downside to this approach is that their solution is targeted at being an entire OS. So I suspect most of the work would be to extract the app management from the rest?
One issue I have with your idea is that most open source servers/app are designed to be run on Linux right? Not every users use it on their main machine. You also talk a lot about docker… does it work on Windows? I mean WSL sounds like a nightmare to manage with script, for other peoples. From my point of view, YuNoHost solution is easy enough for a layman, and they will be happy not to break their main PC, have access from their phone, … even if only at home.
Thanks a lot for bringing yunohost up, this looks very very interesting. I will bring it up there.
When it comes to docker, I think at least Mac would be close to Linux (at least from my experience in my previous job – there are some integration issues, but managable I think). Windows I have no idea to be honest, could be a nightmare. For me the benefits of docker seem to be: isolation from the rest of the machine, and that pretty much every selfhostable app has a docker compose file.
