Hi all,
question to you: How many of your selfhosted Apps are improving your life? Which apps are you really using on a daily/weekly basis?
Many of my running containers are just for … running containers.
Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, Authentik, Uptime-Kuma, Wireguard … they are not improving my life, they are only improving Selfhosting. But we are not doing selfhosting just for the sake of it? Do we? …
Many of my running containers … are getting replaced by Open Source client software eventually
- I’ve installed Trilium Notes - but I’m using Obsidian (more plugins, mobile apps, easy backup)
- I’ve installed Vikunja - but I’m using Obisdian (connecting tasks with notes is more powerful)
- I’ve installed Snapdrop - but I’m using LocalSend (more reliable)
- I’ve installed Bitwarden - but I’m using KeePass (easy backups, better for SSH credentials)
- I’ve installed AdGuard - but I’m using uBlock (more easy to disable for Shopping etc.)
- …
So the few Selfhosted Apps, that improve my life
File Management
- Paperless NGX - all my documents are scanned and archived here
- Nextcloud - all my files accessible via WebUI (& replaced Immich/Photoprism with Photos plugin)
- Syncthing - all my files synchroniced between devices and Nextcloud
- Kopia - Backup of all my files encrypted into the cloud
And that’s a little bit sad, right? The only “Job to be done” self-hosting is a solution for me is … file management. Nothing else.
What are your experiences? How makes self-hosting your life better?
( I’m not using selfhosting for musc / movies / series nowadays, as streaming is more convenient for me and I’m doing selfhosting mainly because of privacy and not piracy reasons - so that usecase is not included in my list ;)My only SmartHome usecase is Philips Hue - and I’m controlling it with Android Tasker )
Uptime Kuma maintainer here. The reason why I made this because I have some services like databases and websites cannot be down for a long time. I need someone send a notification to me if they are down.
If you think it is not improving your life, it is probably because you don’t have such similar scenario and you probably don’t need this indeed.
My point is that it may be not improving your life, but it improves my life at least, or others’. That’s just a choice.
It’s all shits and giggles for me. Whatever service I fancy gets spun up, poked at and then left running until I need to free up resources for the next thing. It’s a wonderful mess.
I’d say I am 95% homelaber and 5% selfhoster. Most of my stuff is for experimentation and learning. And most of my services are vanilla ones, like samba. So in essence I am self-hosting not much more than a few linux environments.
The things that are indispensable to me are samba, my docker development stack, uptime kuma, and a simple wordpress installation that I use for notes and documentation. Oh and lately Stirling-PDF. That thing is just awesome.
I have tried various tools, but I keep coming back to vanilla samba for most stuff. Like paperless-ngx. For my needs, it’s just a fancy way to tag documents. I don’t need full text search or OCR, and I can find most of my files quickly using a simple directory hierarchy. I do not really need the extra overhead of maintaining paperless-ngx. The same for things like Immich, plex or Owncloud. Samba and file explorer preview works perfectly for me.
Mainly for privacy reason:
- TeamSpeak
- Seafile
And something I find really useful: ChangeDetection, to monitor changes on webpages, like prices, stocks, news…
I don’t run any containers.
I own my own data.
I back up my own computers.
My email is mine.
You don’t need to overcomplicate it, it’s not a competition, and you don’t have to do what everyone else does.