I don’t have a home server yet but I’m exploring and sometimes I get confused about some posts here.
For example I saw a post asking for recommendation for a “self hosted budget management app”. Can’t you just install this type of app to your phone or pc? What’s the purpose here, will you host it and access it from a browser? Or do you only want to backup its data to your server?
I hope I don’t sound stupid please enlighten me.
I think for a lot of people as well, a big factor is when you share that data between multiple devices, if you use your own solution, then you don’t have to trust other companies with your data.
No, but now you have to trust yourself with security.
It seems to me to be a bit of the fly vs drive debate. Flying is objectively safer, but lots of people get more freaked out by it because they have zero control over the outcome.
Flying is only safer than driving until the fuel runs out, then you’re much safer in a car 😉
I think the threat model is sufficiently different enough for self hosters versus commercial offerings that it is possible to maintain a comparable level of security to what you’d enjoy elsewhere with significantly less technical training. E.g., I run a home server using a point-to-point Wireguard configuration such that only devices I’ve explicitly set up with Wireguard can access any of its services. My ports are very quiet.