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 )

  • louislamlam@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • gramoun-kal@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Paperless has improved my life by at least 12%. There’s a “before paperless” era in my life when there was a 20-40% chance I would be able to find a sheet of printed paper that the bureaucracy of my country thought was more important than Life itself.

    Now, it’s a solid 100%.

    Nextcloud has improved my life by 3% I’d say. It basically does the same as Google. But I fell 3% better overall to not be so incredibly dependent on Google. If google imploded today, I’d still feel it because of Google Play Services on Android. But that’s pretty much the only thing.

  • dollhousemassacre@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • edthesmokebeard@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • z0r1337@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Mainly for privacy reason:

    • TeamSpeak
    • Seafile

    And something I find really useful: ChangeDetection, to monitor changes on webpages, like prices, stocks, news…

  • j0hnp0s@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • ozzeruk82@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    We have many apps that are used daily and improve our lives, the family wiki is trillium, family photos on Photoprism, NAS storage for each person for their documents etc. navidrome for music, various for media consumption, oobabooga for a private chatgpt, automatic1111s stable diffusion UI for graphic design. Some finance logging tools I wrote to manage our finances. A series of cameras viewable that cover the house. Tasmota on dozens on smart plugs/lights/sensors etc. a zigbee network for door monitoring. Pihole. Homer as the dashboard to reach everything. Plus various others. For me it’s the golden age of self hosting, so many mature products now. I’m also pretty ruthless, if there’s something we don’t use it’s deleted.

  • Geoffman05@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    My services all serve a purpose.

    I host a portfolio website. It gets me exposure even though I’m not actively seeking other employment.

    My wife runs her own travel agency so her website is also required.

    Pihole is used daily to block ads on our network.

    Wireguard is on our mobile devices (phones, laptops) so we always have a secure connection on untrusted wifi, ad blocking, access to our documents that live on our file server. I’m at MCO right now waiting for a flight with full confidence that my connection is secure.

    Nginx proxy manager to route the website traffic.

    Rclone is used to regularly backup the file server that holds our documents.

    Minecraft server because happy toddler = happy life.

    I used to selfhost bitwarden (vaultwarden) but changed to paying $10/yr to relieve myself of the added stress that it brought for security/backups.

  • NikStalwart@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I am legally blind. I got into programming and linux specifically so that I can improve my life, even though I don’t want to pursue an IT career professionally.

    So, the short answer to your question is: most of my apps really do improve my daily life. And a good many of them I wrote myself.

    Here’s a largely-arbitrary mind dump:

    • Windows, unfortunately, has the best on-screen magnifier, so I cannot entirely leave the platform.
    • However, most GUI apps and web pages suck. They suck in many fascinating ways that are beyond the scope of this comment, but I have found that some tasks are quicker to perform from a CLI than from a GUI. For instance, managing documents. I can write a shell oneliner faster than I can load a GUI app for bulk file renaming or whatever other thing people tend to do. I can tell gnuplot to produce a graph much faster than I can draw one by hand.
    • Until very recently there wasn’t a Dark Mode for word processors. So I’d just write Markdown files in VS Code and then convert with pandoc.
    • Math is much easier with scripting than with calculators
    • Text to speech is a lifesaver. And sometimes you need to write your own whacky scripts to scrap webpages and read them out to yourself.
    • I need to conform to academic referencing standards. Who’s got time for that? Nobody. Computers can do that for me.
    • Web scraping — some websites are so bad, the only way to use them is to scrape then convert.

    But that’s from an accessibility perspective and more programming than self-hosting per se.

    Now from reading your OP, I think it is an attitude problem rather than a selfhosting problem. uBlock Origin and AdGuard (blocky, in my case) are not mutually exclusive. You just need to know how TF to use them. Since I use uBlock in Paranoid Mode (basically a lite uMatrix mode with filterlists), I don’t need to block so-called tracker scripts at the DNS level. My DNS adblocker is only blocking ads. Ergo, things like shopping do not break. You are saying that it is easier to disable uBlock for shopping — but I can change DNS with one script. Just temporarily switch to 1.1.1.1 or something, and everything works. Where’s the problem?

    I’m not sure what your complaint is with Bitwarden. It is not exactly hard to back it up when it is running in docker, and easier still if you use vaultwarden (much simpler backend).

    You say that you use ‘Portainer, Nginx Proxy Manager, Authentik, Uptime-Kuma, Wireguard’ and they are not improving your life.

    I’ll agree on the first two, but maybe that’s just because I hate webuis with a burning passion. But how are Authentik and Wireguard not improving your life?

    Do you know why I use wireguard? I’ll tell you why I use wireguard.

    A long time ago, I needed to go to hospital. I also had a university assignment due the same day as I was in hospital. Thought to myself, ‘no problem, I’ll just bring my laptop with me; I’ve got Google Drive Sync set up so I can work on my files remotely’. So I check in, boot up, log in, and what do I see? Old files. Old files from three weeks ago. Why? Because Google Drive decided to go on strike and, in true GUI App fashion, displayed a tiny error notification in the tray icon that you would need a microscope to see. Naturally, being half-blind, I didn’t see it. So now I am, figuratively up shit creek without a paddle!

    So what do I do? Well, I deploy “KVM over Mom”. I ask my mom to drive back home — mind you, this is a 70-minute drive — and get her to bring my machine up. I walk her through getting into my machine and resurrecting Google Drive Sync. And then I spend 4 hours in the hospital queue finishing off my assignment.

    That episode taught me a few things:

    • Google sucks but I have to live with it
    • KVM-over-Mom is not a viable long-term solution
    • I need remote access
    • Redundancy is good.

    So, fast-forward a few months and I am using my dad’s NAS as a jumphost/proxy into our home network, where I can use wake-on-lan and RDP to connect to my machine. I have also switched from Google Drive Sync to File Stream (as it then was) so that my files are automatically available in gdrive. And that latter bit saves my ass some months later when my dad’s NAS has a disagreement with a kernel update and I can no longer remote in. We also have a hoard of Chinese bots hammering away at our internet-facing 16-year-old router, so that’s not great either. Also, ssh tunnels are neat, but are annoying to configure.

    Fast forward a few years and an Unspecified Virus of Unspecified Origin that temporarily obviated the need for remote access, I now use a VPN. In fact, me being a somewhat cautious person, I use several VPNs, for remote access into my home network. There is a vanilla wireguard “in case things with multiple moving parts break” tunnel and more convenient mesh orchestrators, although I have a hard time finally deciding between innernet and headscale.

    And does having remote access to my home computer improve my life? Yes. Most definitely. My home computer and server have much more storage than does my laptop. And sometimes you just need access to your copy of Hanks Australian Constitutional Law 12th ed, what can I say…

    The issue I see with many self-hosters is that they start with a solution looking for a problem as evidenced by the frequent “I am bored, tell me what to selfhost” posts we see on this sub. It is much better to start with a problem and try to solve it. Then you don’t have to have an existential crisis over whether you are hosting too many replicas of postresql…

    :wq

  • virtualadept@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Everything I self host I use each and every day (every other day, if I’m busy). I don’t keep stuff hanging around just because.

  • Tibuski@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Selfhosted services I couldn’t do without anymore are :

    At Home

    • Homer
    • Home Assistant
    • Vaultwarden
    • Paperless-ngx

    At work

    • Promotheus/Blackbox/Grafana
    • Netbox
    • Gitea
    • Vaultwarden
    • Mkdocs Material
  • l8s9@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I am hosting useful apps and it’s a hobby! So it’s never boring or something I get sick of.

  • VoXaN24@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I self host my Bitwarden instance just for the sake of « it’s in my server, I managed my data » And I self host my website because why not after all ? I’ve fiber internet

    • bulwark@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Man I would love to host my own instance of bitwarden but I just don’t trust myself enough not to lose all my passwords.

  • CrustyBatchOfNature@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I started just for funsies, and in the end narrowed it down to just those items that make life better for us. Primarily, I run 2 Technitium DNS (network wide ad blocking), Jellyfin (for media), Home Assistant (to control lights and other devices without internet access), Mealie (recipes), and Ubooquity (books and comics). I have run NextCloud, among other services, but none of them got enough use to make it worth it to continue.