I am trying to use my old laptops for self-hosting. One has a 6th gen Intel Core i3 (4GB ram), the other has an 11th gen Intel Core i5 (8GB ram). I have previously tried both ubuntu server and desktop but couldn’t get it to work well. For the former I found it difficult to remote ssh and the latter I had difficulty installing Docker containers. (I’m not very good with the command line)
I would like to find an OS that is easier to setup with less of a neccesity for the command line (I would still like to learn how to use it though, I don’t want to get rid of it entirely!). I’ve heard of CasaOS, is that a good option? It seems quite easy to use. What about other alternatives?
Almost all of selfhosting is editing config files, setting permissions and starting/stopping services.
Setting it up so you can administer a server by desktop is probably as hard as learning how to edit config files from a terminal. Maybe harder.
Yep my thoughts. New selfhosters think the hard part of selfhosting is command line but that’s “kinda” like thinking that the hard part of math is writing numbers on paper. Terminal is just the medium, not the complex part. Navigating filesystem and editing files is easier on the desktop but changing permissions and managing services would be be extremely difficult for a newbie without using the terminal because (almost) every online tutorial uses terminal. OP would have to learn how to translate the terminal command to its desktop counterpart at which point they might as well use the terminal.
OP also has an XY problem. They asked for a system which does not require terminal usage but they should have actually asked for an easy to set up system. People are recommending things like Yunohost though, so it’s fine in the end.
If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.
You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.
Could you recommend a source for learning how to use the command line? In the past I struggled with understanding the basic commands and the various flags. I’ve found it difficult to find good documentation, but I would like to learn
I highly recommend O’Reilly’s Learning the Bash Shell in paperback form: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-bash/0596009658/.
The other responses you’ve received so far don’t offer much insight into the historical background and underlying mechanics of the shell, which are crucial to understanding the "Why?"s of command-line quirkiness.
A 20 year old paperback book seems like a bad choice.
It’s a 36 y/o language, mate. I still reference my copy all the time, and found it to be a great definitive resource when I was learning.
How many bash 4/5 features are you seriously using on a regular basis? What do you think is out-of-date?
Are you under the impression that that language hasn’t changed?
Since it seems like you don’t know much about bash at all, I promise the book will help you.
You can be someone who actually knows what they’re talking about instead of making embarrassing, snarky comments that expose your lack of education on the topic at hand.
Maybe you can be the kind of person who isn’t offended by questions and retaliates with personal insults. Just a thought.
It’s been a long time since I learned, so I don’t remember exactly what I used, but at a cursory glance, this one looks good:
https://www.terminaltutor.com/
Also, learning to read man pages will help a lot. Here’s an article on that:
https://itsfoss.com/linux-man-page-guide/
I do remember using “terminal cheat sheets” like this:
https://phoenixnap.com/kb/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/linux-commands-cheat-sheet-pdf.pdf
TBF ChatHPT is probably your best bet
It’s not as scary as people make it sound.
It is not “scary”. It is complicated and requires special knowlege.
I wouldn’t call it complicated, but yeah, it’s special knowledge. So is all of self hosting.
You wouldn’t. A lot of tech people wouldn’t. But it is. I’ve found this out the hard way, after spending dozens of hours trying to figure it out. You’re not doing anyone any favors.
It’s not any more complicated than a GUI, it’s just that the dozens of hours you spent learning to use a GUI was a long time ago, and you don’t remember how complicated it was.
Also, you’re probably exaggerating, because dozens of hours is way longer than it should take to become proficient at the terminal. There are resources online that you can use to learn in a few hours.
it’s just that the dozens of hours you spent learning to use a GUI
This is utter nonsense. You do not need to learn to use a GUI. You just look at the available buttons and click the ones you need. And when you click them they do what they say, they don’t return a “command not found” or “undefined error” with zero diagnostic information. And they work the same regardless of what OS or distro you’re on.
The fact that you don’t understand this is why you’re not qualified to tell people that it’s “not scary”.
Self hosting is doomed until this isn’t the answer.
Yeah, this whole “Linux server” thing just isn’t going to take off.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
You know what self hosted projects have been successes? Plex and Home Assistant. You know what projects don’t require the terminal? Plex and Home Assistant.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
Good. Mainstream consumers don’t understand enough about networking and computer security to be trusted to self-host anything beyond desktop applications. And even that is debatable. They’re so bad at it that walled-gardens have become ubiquitous just to keep viruses from running rampant.
Notice that it hasn’t amongst mainstream consumers.
What? A niche technical hobby isn’t popular among mainstream consumers? Wow!
Mainstream consumers don’t know words “Plex” and “Home Assistant” either. There are already products that target these people. And there are products targeted at technical people. We need diversity.
Self hosting is just an extension of open source software. It’s only goal is being able to run your own backends of apps to not be exploited by major companies. It’s goal is not to be a niche technical hobby, if that’s your goal in its own right, then get a model train or a Warhammer set.
Mainstream consumers don’t know words “Plex” and “Home Assistant” either.
Yes, they do lol. It’s flat out weird to think that the only people who have ever heard of pirating are software developers and server admins who use the command line.
You got into Self Hosting for unreasonable ideological reasons
I got into self hosting to avoid AWS Fees
We are not the same
Notice that mainstream customers dont self host.
You’re viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services. Who cares if server grade software is terminal only? Its good enough for the companies that sponsor these projects and its good enough for enterprise level users.
You’re viewing this through an incredibly skewed lense. The average person will never even consider self hosting nor will care, if anything the average person prefers cloud services.
The only lens I’m viewing this through is one that dares to imagine that the Venn diagram of “computer users savvy enough to care about privacy” isn’t 100% contained within the circle of “computer users savvy with the terminal”.
Quite frankly your stance that the ‘average person’ doesn’t care, when this post is LITERALLY from an ‘average person’ who does, is the one that seems off base on its face.
This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person. Also im viewing this through realistic lenses, enterprise software developers fund TTY server grade software and people like you who complain about that are very rarely the type of people who contribute or make software. Yeah sorry but imagining is worthless unless you can code and your complaints come off as entitled whining.
This is literally lemmy, a (relatively) niche platform where somebody is asking about a (relatively) niche subject. I dont think anything about this is a average person.
‘Average person’ was in quotes because it’s the language you used to describe someone not comfortable with the command line.
Notice that mainstream customers dont self host.
Yes, that’s what they said.
Self hosting isn’t likely to ever get to the point of “plug and play”. It’s inherently incredibly flexible and different people will do different things with it. Some people just want NAS. Some people want to build a router. Some people want to have a modest compute farm that they physically own. Some people want a virtualization playground. Or pretty much anything else you can think of, or some combination thereof.
For instance, I custom built a 2-tier + optane cached NAS running proxmox, and I have a handful of old thin clients I can spin up for doing Beowulf things when I feel like it, and I also have another repurposed thin client with an old enterprise-grade SFP+ NIC running pfSense as my router that can support up to 10g (futureproofing).
Generally, Linux Servers are best administered from a command line. At least in the beginning to set everything up. In turn they are faster on lower hardware as they dont even have a graphical desktop at all so need less resources. You could of course install a windows server OS. They can be fully administered through Remote Desktop and a GUI.
There are multiple projects to make self hosting more accessible (like casaOS). They automate many steps of the setup and then offer you a webUI for further steps. Maybe have a look here https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted?tab=readme-ov-file#self-hosting-solutions
The learning curve might be a little high in some regards, but you may want to try NixOS. There are quite a few services ready to enable and customize for self-hosting, and the design makes updating packages fairly simple.
To be clear, NixOS is not a “simple” solution, but it does work well for self hosting.
NixOS doesn’t have a curve, it’s a fucking wall 😆
How is that useful to OP who asked for something “without terminals”? Unless that was a joke.
Because I’ve been using Arch Linux for 15 years and live in the terminal, but even though I like the idea of NixOS, it’s not only scary because it is alien and I have neither motivation nor enough free time to learn a parallel world and gain non-transferable skills for a niche solution. And that with being interested in what NixOS is doing.
I would say it is horrible advice to a novice, unless you want to scare people away from learning terminals and configs and managing an operating system without GUI tools.
I’m not interested in arguing. You’re welcome to your opinion as well.
Multiple individuals noted the value of diving into non-GUI server administration, and I wanted to share a tool that could be of interest down the road.
Fair enough. I’m sure NixOS is a great tool, like Haskell is a great programming language (in fact my previously favorite language with a special place in my heart that taught me most about properly structuring and thinking about code).
I just wanted to put it into perspective, because not everybody wants to go into THAT deep end. But anyway, it’s all good.
On a side note, your first sentence is something that I have never seen being said ever by anyone on Reddit. Yeah respectfully agreeing to disagree is also a perfectly fine option.
Well said and thanks for expanding on the topic. It’s great to get more information out there and give others extra perspective.
I find Haskell fascinating too - it really changes your expectations of programming languages!
😄 Sometimes it’s hard to remember the differential
