localhosting: selfhosting to the min
localhosting is a minimalistic form of selfhosting, and it has the potential to open up selfhosting to a broader audience.
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.
My initial reaction was basically one of your headlines - "Desktop apps with extra steps". But I guess you are right that selfhosted apps are often better than plain desktop apps. Interesting idea in general.
A cool thing to have with this would be backups, designed in a way that makes it easy to manually back up on a USB drive. Not necessarily automated, but maybe with automatic reminders "You didn't back up your data in X days - Backup now - Close".
Thanks, I thought about backups/snapshots too, especially snapshots before version updates, such that users can always jump back if something goes wrong.
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.
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!
I'm a bit of a nerd but kubernetes was way too much for me. Currently I use dokploy on a raspberry pi which has a growing list of "recipes" in a "store". It does a lot of the heavy lifting in the background and has a pretty selfexplanatory web gui.
It really helped me to starting my selfhosting journey by slowly dipping my toes and going a bit deeper each time. Might be worth checking it out. Sorry if this reads like an ad, I just really like it ...
I’m a professional software engineer and I’ve been in the industry since before Kubernetes was first released, and I still found it overwhelming when I had to use it professionally.
I also can’t think of an instance when someone self-hosting would need it. Why did you end up looking into it?
I use Docker Compose for dozens of applications that range in complexity from “just run this service, expose it via my reverse proxy, and add my authentication middleware” to “in this stack, run this service with my custom configuration, a custom service I wrote myself or forked, and another service that I wrote a Dockerfile for; make this service accessible to this other service, but not to the reverse proxy; expose these endpoints to the auth middleware and for these endpoints, allow bypassing of the auth middleware if an API key is supplied.” And I could do much more complicated things with Docker if I needed to, so even for self-hosters with more complex use cases than mine, I question whether Kubernetes is the right fit.
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.
I buy it.
As it turns out, a couple of months ago when a laptop crapped out at an inopportune time, I needed to retreat to a much older machine with barely enough memory to keep a browser running all day. As I tried to work out a recovery plan for the things that didn't seem properly backed up (they were, just not where I expected them), I remembered that I had a couple of old Raspberry Pi units that I never did much with, and decided that could take the load off of the laptop if I tossed them in the corner.
So far, I have Code Server to substitute for Visual Studio Code, Cryptpad for Libre Office, Forgejo just because I really should have done that a long time ago, Fresh RSS for a rotating list of RSS readers since I dropped my Internet-accessible Tiny Tiny RSS installation, Inf Cloud and Radicale for a calendar/address book, Jellyfin that used to run on the then-in-use old laptop, Snappy Mail for Thunderbird and the bunch of heavy webpages from mail providers, YaCy because I've wanted to use it more for many years, and a few others.
Moving onto a more functional computer, I decided to keep the servers running, because the setup works about as well as the desktop setups that I've run for years, if I use a few pinned tabs. I'm sure that I'll scream about it when something goes wrong, but it does the job...
this is self-hosting local-first apps. There's some local-first manifesto somewhere... one of their greatest 'backend' developments were CRDTs. The idea, is that the app can be turned off, synchronization can be interrupted and resumed, and so on. Those CRDTs allow people to use a text editor even when the client(s) are disconnected from the server. Of course, depending on how much your version differs, the merge conflict of diverging versions will be easier to solve...
Thanks for that input, I have to look deeper into it. It seems to me that their idea is an approach you choose during software development, while localhosting is about hosting somebody else's software that's already out and probably does not include these local-first principles.
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.
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.
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).
ive been going back to basics the last few years after years of messing around with self hosted stuff for a while. i just like the simplicity of the files being local and not worrying about logins or needing to be iconnected to my home network or needing remote access etc.
plain text markdown files for note taking. keepass for passwords, which is just a single file. instead of using jellyfin to watch movies i usually just open a file browser. m3u playlists for listening to music with mpv. then syncthing for syncing all that between devices.
something i want to do soon is to run Radicale/calDAV locally on each device and then have syncthing sync the changes instead of needing every device to talk to a central calDAV server. DecSync is another option for this kind of thing i think
for bookmark syncing im currently using Floccus with the webDAV server thats running on my synology, but i would like get that webDAV server running locally with syncthing at some point as well
mainly if its something that i use daily i want to try and get the files to always be stored locally, then other things that i might only use 2 or 3 times i week i dont mind doing self hosted stuff
I also love the "files over app" approach, I am doing it more and more for simple stuff like (habit-) tracking. With the tempo that applications become outdated or even obsolete, I think this is something very powerful.
I think your radicale/caldav approach is interesting. Would you then also run radicale on your phone? Or simply not have the calendar on your phone? Would syncthing only sync in your home network too?
the phone part would the tricky bit. i think it should be doable using Termux on Android to run it. Termux has a "boot" plugin that should start Radicale every time the phone is turned on, but whether it will run reliably is another question.
Syncthing runs a discovery server that helps nodes/devices find each other when you are away from your home network, so it should still sync in most cases. on some routers, if it cant get around the NAT then files will be synced using Syncthing's relay server, but you have the option to turn both of those off if you want either