Hi everyone, I posted about my Safebox project earlier, but now I’d like to hear your thoughts on something a bit broader. I’ve been noticing a pattern in self-hosting communities, and I’m curious if others see it too.
Whenever someone asks for a more beginner-friendly solution, something with a UI, automated setup, or fewer manual configs, there’s often a response like: “If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting.”
Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour. Don’t get me wrong, I love the technical side of self-hosting. I enjoy tinkering, breaking things, fixing them, learning along the way. That’s how most of us got into it.
But if we want more people to own their data, escape Big Tech, and embrace open-source alternatives, shouldn’t we welcome solutions that lower the entry barrier?
There’s room for:
- people who want full control and custom setups
- people who want semi-manual but guided
- people who want it to work with minimal friction
Just like not every Linux user compiles from source, but they’re still Linux users.
Where do you stand? Should self-hosting stay DIY only or is there value in easier, more accessible ways to self-host?
Safebox aims to make self-hosting more approachable without sacrificing data ownership, so I genuinely want your honest take before releasing it more widely.
Some technical highlights of the project, for those interested:
Safebox runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, supports both x86 and ARM64 (including Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, and others), and handles domain/subdomain setup, Let’s Encrypt certificates, DNS configuration, reverse proxy (nginx), and also offers WireGuard-based remote access.
The project is currently in beta, and we’d really appreciate feedback from anyone interested in testing it, whether it’s about usability, stability, features, design, or honestly anything at all. You can find all the info about beta testing on our Discord channel.
If you’d like to try it out, check the Github repo: https://github.com/safeboxnetwork/framework-scheduler
Website: https://safebox.network/
Discord: https://discord.gg/aBP8bz6N8J
Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a look or shares their thoughts.
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Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour.
Its not this, it’s that there are very serious risks to self hosting (dataloss, hacks etc), and if they aren’t prepared for them, itll be catastrophic.
The gatekeeping isnt just for fun, there are actual risks and downsides.
As for prepackaging an appliance, we already have a model for how that plays out. There are millions of ISP provided routers and IoT things, and every other day there is a new breach involving them.
Shoutout to that dude last week posting a fully public fileshare service because he wanted to “practice” selfhosting
there’s often a response like: “If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting.”
This is the part that I don’t like. Couple this with condescending labels like ‘normies’ et al, I can kind of understand why selfhosting is still something that only a small segment of the population engages in. I realize that people like to differentiate themselves from others. It doesn’t matter if you’re collecting stamps or you’re the tiddlywinks champion of the world, we like to draw a line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which is a pretty poignant song by Pink Floyd btw.
As @CameronDev@programming.dev pointed out, there are very serious consequences to self hosting too. The first Linux server I stood up got taken over fairly quickly, and over night began attacking other servers. That’s serious shit and the owners of said servers don’t take it lightly, and rightfully so. The owners of the platform you may be hosting on don’t take it lightly either. So, yeah, there are some basics one needs to learn and implement before they can begin a successful, resilient, hardened, server, and it’s not a lot of point and click solutions. Again…shit’s complex. It’s why there are so many specialists in the field, but now you as the selfhoster have to wear all the admin hats.
The doors to selfhosting should swing wide for all, and I try to be as accommodating as I possibly can because I know how I struggle and have struggled with things from time to time.
Safebox looks pretty interesting. I’ve often thought, if I were a much younger man, I would’ve loved to produce a type of ‘server in a box’. But I am well past being a younger man, so I’ll leave that up to you young guns.
This is a cool project, I have quite a few questions! Are you planning an “app store” repo of supported software? Allowing us to add our own repos? Can i set up a reverse proxy/VPN tunneling using my own hardware, or is remote access only available through a Safebox subscription? If I can set it up is that manual, guided, or automatic? Why Docker instead of Podman?
Those are all very good questions that I’m sure many of us would like to know the answers to.
I’m happy to answer — I am one of the developers of Safebox. First question: the store. It’s not finished yet, but if you visit our original gitea site (https://git.format.hu/safebox/default-applications-tree) and check the template examples, you’ll see that any application that can run in Docker can be added. I will soon move this repository to GitHub so it can be freely forked and you can add your own. You can already try adding one on an earlier (uglier) interface that we experimented with: http://<the IP address or hostname of your Safebox>:8080/manage_old.html. Click Settings, and the first menu item is the option to add another repository.
Second question: remote access is not subscription-based, and it does not require VPN. If you have a public IP address, install Safebox there, register a domain name somewhere (point it to your IP address as an A record, wildcard is also possible), and the proxy service will work. (But be aware: Safebox will also be accessible on port 8080, and there is no authentication protection for now!)
Third question: I wasn’t very familiar with Podman when I started working on this (I only had to learn it for the RedHat exam…)
I think your project has admirable goals, but things like Cosmos Cloud and Casa OS already aim to address this. I think it would be useful for you to show what value proposition yours brings versus their apps, e.g. which parts of selfhosting you think your app handles better. I also agree with @flatfire@lemmy.ca in that much more documentation is needed so the user can educate themselves how the back end works.
Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, proper documentation is already in the works, and I hope that will make it clear how our project differs. Thanks for the suggestion!
I’m struggling to understand what this is and why someone should use it
Safebox is basically a framework to help you install and manage self hosted apps. It also includes features like remote access, backup, monitoring, and disk management (the last three are still in development). Safebox handles all the setup for you, DNS configuration, SSL certificates, and so on. If you want remote access, all you need to do is provide a domain (it can be an existing one, or you can register it with us). Of course, you can still use it locally, remote access is just an optional feature.
For people who don’t want to deal with the technical side, or who are still learning but want to try out self-hosting, I think Safebox makes things a lot easier and gives them a solid starting point
I believe self hosting should be made easier. Definitely easier to understand.
If its not going to be that, then the opinion that people should self host is flawed. Not everybody can self host. They don’t have the knowledge or time to commit to it. So either it’s wrong to not have a better entry to them or it’s wrong to say they should self host.
I don’t self host much. What I do I keep with local access only. Why? Because while I’m no dummy, I also am very out of touch with modern tech and don’t have the time or energy to learn what I need to for it to be done right.
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I’ve seen many projects like this over the years, they never seem to take off for some reason. Freedombox seemed pretty interesting to me back in the day, but I already had some old hardware and didn’t mind learning how to set things up myself. I think Sandstorm is/was another option. And I think Nextcloud is also a framework of sorts (idk, I don’t use it). To an extent TrueNAS is also a kind of an all-in-one solution that has one-click installs of most of these apps.
People make it too complicated. When I want to self host something I just install the Nix package and call it a day.
When I get around to upgradingy storage, I’ll just do a very simple RAID setup on some reliable HDDs.
I’m super allergic to unnecessary complexity. I don’t want a perfect setup, I want a setup that is reliable with almost no maintenance. I’m skipping the 80% of the effort it takes to get the last 20% of the result.
lol Nix as the beginner friendly choice?
“very simple RAID?”
For someone who hasn’t even seen a command line before? Who doesn’t know what a RAID is? That’s the target audience here.
You’re entirely missing OP’s point here. You’ve reduced maintenance complexity, but increased the typical learning curve to get started.
