Neil BrownFeb 24

I self-host a lot of stuff. Nearly everything that I use. FOSS and self-hosting is a massive part of my computing experience.

I love reading about people enjoying / exploring self-hosting stuff.

I struggle when people advocate "just self-host it", without giving due consideration to the costs, risks, security considerations, and so on.

I know that I've posted this a few times now, but this discussion seems to pop up quite a lot. So:

https://neilzone.co.uk/2022/07/self-host-it-is-not-the-answer/

#SelfHosting #FOSS #blog

'Self-host it' is not the answer

I'm going out on a limb a bit here.

Show threadChristian Berger DECT 2763Feb 24
@neil When I was young there were organisations offering "shell servers" where you could run your software and host your website in a subdirectory of your home directory. That all was done for minimal amounts of money.
Maybe we need something like that again in the age of ad-phones.
Show threadA cool crab wearing shadesFeb 27
@casandro @neil a VPS is kind of the modern version of this.
Show threadChristian Berger DECT 2763

@neckspike @neil Yeah, but on those systems you only had a normal user account. You couldn't be root, but you could host static web pages. Plus it was much cheaper and non-commercial. Essentially the simplest tier was free, and you could pay a bit more to support the service. It's more like a VPS, but used by many.

(Also VPSes seem to be strangely expensive outside of Germany)

Feb 27 at 6:20amWeb
Show threadjellygraphFeb 27

@casandro @neckspike @neil You mean something like the tildeverse?

https://tilde.wiki/Tildeverse

tildeverse - Tildeverse Wiki