I’m a Windows guy since forever and I recently got into selfhosting. So far its a blast! Are posts about that welcome here?
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Yes, masochists are welcome.
I don’t think that Linux is in the title or description of this community!
You pick your own poison …
Mine is Gentoo Linux all the way, yours is Windows. Find two more selfhosters and they will criticize both of us! We are kind of the two extreme of the spectrum…
Welcome!
So true! I met a friend of a friend at a church social last week and he spent the whole time trying to convince me to try FreeBSD instead of selfhosting on Windows. I might try it someday but as polite as he was about it he just couldn’t get the hint lol
Yeah, but you’ll probably figure it out eventually.
Gentoo taught me a lot. I ran hardened gentoo with grsec, pax, and selinux ~20 years ago. That was really a nag. I’m glad for the experience though, I’m never afraid to compile my own kernel now. I just prefer the convenience of debian or fedora based distros now.
When I do a hardware refresh on my self hosted machines(typically over 5 years) I usually wait for a bleeding edge brand new socket, and have to compile the latest kernel for reasonable performance and stability until maintainers backport or the distro moves forward.
How does Gentoo work for you? Is it true, that an update takes like a week, because you have to compile everything from scratch?
It’s a myth.
Yes it takes longer, but specialy on headless server updates are pretty fast
Big boys like LibreOffice Firefox have also pre built binaries if you so prefer as well …
I use Gentoo since amd k6-400 MHz times so today build times feel like no wait at all
Sure, if that’s what you want to do. Though, you’ll probably find less references and expertise here. There is a reason that even Microsoft runs Linux on most of its own servers.
Sure ! But… How !? I don’t have even the first idea how you’d host… Almost anything on Windows 😅 and I would be concerned by the power consumption of any non-minimalist OS.
Hyper-v server can get pretty damn lightwieght as it ships without a GUI
+1 for Hyper-V, despite being glitchy and only sustaining Home Assistant for about 12 hours this and VirtualBox were my best chance at self hosting VMs on a Windows host. The problem wasn’t the virtualization, but the rest of the OS and its persistent maintenance cycles. Antivirus (MsMpEng.exe) and its NTFS scanning running more and more resources until the CPU was clogged. OP has gotta start somewhere.
Oh I was suggesting a the free standalone hyper v server MS did but I just searched for it and it looks like they killed it off recently which sucks. Was probably the best MS os going.
Docker for desktop will also let you run a lot of services
Isn’t docker on windows just Linux in a trenchcoat?
My ESXi box draws 20 watts at idle with 3 Windows VMs and 3 Linux VMs.
Guess which of those VMs draws the most power (hint: it’s not Windows).
Power draw depends on more than the base OS, what it does matters so much more. Which is why my one Linux VM draws the most power - it gets used for some intense tasks with ffmpeg.
Interestingly, I’ve found little power draw difference using ffmpeg on Windows or Linux. Both will max CPU while converting and take a similar amount of time.
Did you install the guest tools and set the CPU governor to the correct scheduler? Do the Windows boxes host the same applications as the Linux boxes?
Idle windows is so damn heavy on io :(
Well, if masochism is your kink…
Being a former pure windows guy it’s more like battered wife syndrome.
Its an abusive relationship but its all you know and hard to leave.
I’m on bazzite now with a Debian homelab on a SFF.
Still really new to Linux but I’m trying.
Good for you. If the way Windows behaves now doesn’t drive people to Linux, they’ll never jump. They’ll just keep taking the abuse because they like it.
I don’t understand starting out on Linux in an immutable distro, but maybe that’s the oldhead in me, I’ve been on Linux since the 90s. I find adding software in those distros to be a massive pain in the ass, as well as dealing with its constraints on configurability. But if it’s working for you, fill your boots. Welcome to the dark side.
My daily driver is bazzite. It’s my web surfing gaming box.
I got a Linux mint laptop to fuddle with as well. Thats where I break things.
I wouldn’t recommend it personally
Temporary becomes permanent. When I was experiencing severe long-term symptoms of Covid, I bought a refurbished computer to use as a NAS with Jellyfin, Sonarr, and indexers. I kept the installed Windows 10 because I simply did not have the energy to do more. Then, when I felt better, I told myself, “Let me add more services.”
Now, it’s a Frankenstein computer where Windows 10 acts as the hypervisor, running Caddy as my reverse proxy. Crowdsec protects my services, and my Flint 2’s firewall acts as the Crowdsec bouncer. A VirtualBox VM runs in Windows 10 and hosts most of my Docker containers. Stablebits DrivePool manages my drive pool.
I’ve been running this setup for over a year, and I haven’t had any issues. I know I should switch to Linux, but since it’s been working great and I’m busy, I’ve been procrastinating.
Tell us what you are hosting! Tell us now! Lol
Tell us what you are hosting! Tell us now! Lol
IKR! You can’t just tease us OP.
Now, let me be polemical here …
(And this is to be read with a pinch of /s)
Selfhosting on windows and understanding what you do is so much better than selfhost on CasaOS/ZimaOS/FancyWebGui/Synology and just spin up containers randomly without even understand what a container is and how it does work at all …
Now roast me :)
than selfhost on CasaOS/ZimaOS/FancyWebGui/Synology and just spin up containers randomly without even understand what a container is and how it does work at all
- I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
Didnt find any /s there. That’s one of the reasons why I dislike docker, it supports not understanding stuff. But then that’s just me, who wants to understand stuff. Enabling less tech savvy ppl is also great I guess.
Lowering the entry barrier is a good thing… Self hosting need critical mass to support and use all the nice things we like to selfhost
More so, from the point of view of big tech independence, for those who care, again lowering the barrier is very important
So welcome to docker and stuff, I use docker for half my stuff or more, it’s just so much more convenient.
But never stop trying to understand and don’t be a passive docker-puller whenever possible :)
I feel with you, but at the same time I remember trying to setup Apache Guacamole and failing miserably. Doing it now with docker would remove everything that made me fail 10 years ago.
Most self-hosted solutions come as containers, containers are Linux only and on Windows they run under the WSL VM, so eventually (if you are not doing full installs) you are still using Linux
Sure are. I started self hosting with a VM on Hyper-V.
Oh, I’m sorry. Lol.
Hyper-V is just so bad. Decided to run it for a while as a test, I couldn’t get back to ESXi fast enough, haha. And I come from the Enterprise world where Hyper-V is common.
Honestly I find hyper v to be easier to work with then virtual box for home stuff and with what Broadcom has done to VMware I am staying away from it.
Yea, the Broadcom crap really sucks. I feel bad for businesses being held ransom by them.
Hyper-V just isn’t an option for small businesses, unfortunately (it’s really designed for Enterprise where internal expertise is the norm).
I can ignore their nonsense for my home setup., fortunately.
Have you tried XCP-NG or Proxmox?
Nice to hear it!
I would recommend at most ruining windows as the hypervisor then running Linux virtual machines. Maybe run a windows VM if you have a specific need.
This is mainly because Linux is much better “supported” for the majority of self hosted projects.
But you can of course do whatever you want.
Always. Started on windows hypervisors and windows as they were relevant to my work and I was trying to skill up at the time. Since moved to a Linux stack as the lab grew in scope and my distaste for MS grew as well.
my distaste for MS grew
This is a natural progression. Inescapable.
Verily. Especially after working with heavily windows/MS environments for a decade and change. Intune makes my blood boil.
Welcome sure, but few and far between. Check out JimsGarage on YouTube. He does a lot of windows selfhosting content
