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Posted by oldfuture 12/15/2025

Umbrel – Personal Cloud(umbrel.com)
220 points | 122 commentspage 4
kkfx 12/15/2025|
Like frigghome.ai I do not see much interest in these, but they could be an interesting way to bring a homeserver per home, potentially powering a public blockchain for digital identity, (smart)contracts hashed publicly, and a digital currency not owned by anyone in particular with also Liquid Feedback blockchain to construct a new society.

The road is very long, but technically feasible, obviously I expect ferocious push against...

dizhn 12/15/2025||
Seems to be a hardware + software thing.
EvanAnderson 12/15/2025|
Here's a comparison on running it on your own hardware vs. theirs: https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/wiki/umbrelOS-on-Umbrel-...
dizhn 12/16/2025||
They even have install instructions on a linux vm. Pretty cool. Thanks.
nikolay 12/15/2025||
Last time I looked at it it had some craptocurrecy stuff, which lost me as a user.
kevinak 12/15/2025||
It very much came from the Bitcoin world and was sold as a way to run your own node. Great experience if you’re into that but it’s nothing that is forced on you, they’re just “apps” like everything else you can install on it.
wmf 12/15/2025||
I had the same feeling but that was years ago. They seem pretty neutral now.
Kwpolska 12/15/2025||
> Store your files, download and stream media, run a Bitcoin node, and more — all in your home.

Run a Bitcoin node? No, thanks, I don’t want my files anywhere near a crypto bro cloud box.

lazylizard 12/16/2025||
was the market for this birthed by synology when they insisted on synology certified drives?
rammy1234 12/15/2025||
moment I read personal cloud, how is fail over supported... probably dumb question I assume.
amarant 12/15/2025||
So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up...

Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.

dlivingston 12/15/2025|
"If you wish to make an [operating system] from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
amarant 12/15/2025||
It's just weird that I couldn't find any info on which kernel they use. Linux seems the obvious choice for the task (most internet facing servers run Linux after all), but my (admittedly very poor) understanding of the GNU licence is that derivative works also needs to be published under the GNU licence? And they're using a different licence..

So.... BSD?

tredre3 12/15/2025|||
You misunderstand how licensing works. They can build an entirely closed source OS around the Linux kernel if they want. The only thing they'd have to publish is the changes to the kernel itself. I don't see why they'd need to modify the kernel so they'd have to publish absolutely nothing!

But to answer your question, umbrelOS is debian. You're right that they don't advertise that fact anywhere (that I've seen). They use rugpi to build a preconfigured image that includes their changes and their software. All the details are indeed public and open, if you know what you're looking for:

https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/tree/master/packages/os

amarant 12/15/2025||
Ah there we go! Thanks!

That also answers the questions some other commenters have had elsewhere in this thread, about what happens to the hardware if the company fails. Now we know: it's Debian. Apt will remain.

yhu7677 12/16/2025||
Hacker x
Brajeshwar 12/16/2025||
[dead]
johnea 12/15/2025|
SSH is my "personal cloud"...
stronglikedan 12/15/2025|
This seems a lot easier for the average consumer.
doubled112 12/15/2025||
Does it?

Half of the IT team I am on is seemingly incapable of understanding using a public/private keypair for SSH logins.

Can I use yours? How to copy them? Should they be unique per user? Should I email the private key? Etc?

metalliqaz 12/16/2025|||
I believe grandparent post was referring to Umbrel as easier than SSH
doubled112 12/16/2025||
"This" was a little ambiguous but after another read I believe you're likely correct.
zikduruqe 12/16/2025|||
> Ect?

My favorite is when someone posts their private key to a Slack or Teams channel, then says "I'll just delete it after it is received..."

No. Just no. That key is forever unclean.

doubled112 12/16/2025||
Hey, I accidentally created this instance with your key, will you send it to me?

No…