Posted by kingcrimson1000 6 hours ago
This is the point where I'm supposed to describe my self-hosting solution on my so-called homelab, where my blog lives. I won't, because it's both stupid in smart ways and smart in stupid ways, therefore it sucks all the way.
Self-hosting is like any hobby. Half-ass it and you'll half-like it.
I've been doing it for several decades now, it doesn't suck at all for me.
The upside is the security risk is massively reduced, an attacker would have to exploit both the VPN and the service behind it, both of these in theory being secure anyway. The downside is obviously that you require installing a VPN client to access services, but if it's only you using the server this isn't a huge deal.
Personally, I self host because the benefits I receive simply aren't available anywhere else at the level of quality I've come to expect - Jellyfin is a great media player, it's free, and I don't want to switch. Pihole provides ad protection and privacy for my whole home network. It's also free. Homeassistant is amazing, and free. Etc etc.
Only if you don't care about your time or if your media collection is tiny.
Don't get me wrong, I love my 20 TB hard drives full of Linux ISOs, but it's a hard sell on anyone who doesn't have 'dicking about with computers' as their hobby. Regular old piracy using torrents has been a easier sell in my experience, once you can get over the hurdle of getting someone familiar with using a torrent client and the relevant search bar. Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial. Getting people to use Jellyfin isn't hard. Getting someone to be the family/friend group Jellyfin sysadmin is a significantly tougher sell.
Pihole and the like is an easier sell, since it can be mostly set and forget, but it's not free unless you already have a computer which isn't doing anything, and even if you do, that computer isn't guaranteed to be one which has near-zero running costs when you factor in electricity.
The same sorts of problems apply to most things you can self-host.
The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.
I agree, but even I, someone who does have this as a hobby and does self-host a few things, have my limits for the same reasons that the casuals do. Even when I have a computer that I can use for one more purpose, I rarely do that unless I know it will be set and forget, since having one more thing to deal with in my already overburdened life is a hard sell.
> The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.
Very true. I do hope some products like that will appear, but the workflow and UX will have to be damn near perfect, something which home automation often isn't (unless you use Home Assisant and thus have it as a hobby. Funny how that works).
So it really depends on the use case and many factors, if it works for you, great, otherwise and you are willing to pay some subscriptions, then be it.
And yes, you can game on linux nowadays, finally! Even get better performance due to Windows bloat. Office, OBS, internet, video...everything is working...yet it still is not there in usability.
To be specific what irked me today when I tested them was installing new programs. On Cachy, I wanted to test jetbrains IDE. Last time i tested it was on suse and fedora in virtualbox last year and it worked but neither distribution was there just yet in UX. This time, I downloaded the tar version from jetbrains website. I could not open it(maybe due to it being run in live cd mode in virtualbox) or extract(no option in dir manager or decompression program) the content in Cachy. So I wanted to get 7zip but there was no linux version. Cachy has its own packages that can be opened(website) via its welcome screen(otherwise there is no program manager - no snaps, flatpacks...) and after downloading it with some arch file extension i could not install it. I could open it and see usr and bin directories but that helped me fuckall and i was not willing to tinker with this bs in 2026. Then in Aurora, it has bazaar for flatpacks, before i wasted bandwidth to download the IDE in vain again i preemptively wanted zip manager, there was pea..something. So i clicked install, it did and .. nothing. Nowhere to be found. Tried multiple times and no result. Could not find it anywhere. So I said F that and am sticking with the indian windows spyware. The devil you know and whatnot.
Maybe Cachy don't have 7z, I don't know. But Arch (its base) has it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/7-Zip , and I never had any trouble opening 7zips in any Linux either from console or any graphical tool.
Of course 7zip has a Linux version. I'm pretty sure it went a long time exclusively on Linux without having a Windows version. I'm also pretty sure your problem is that you were looking for a 7zip GUI because I don't even remember installing 7zip the last time I installed.
Stop using weird distros and just install Mint or something basic. If you're not a power user and you don't want to be doing power user things, don't pose as one. Mint and Ubuntu are made for handholding people who are afraid to type, and will give you tools to avoid having to do it.
Or, instead, you can realize that if you learned how to use the commandline in Linux 25 years ago, the skills you learned would still be useful. If you learned unix on a mainframe, you could still figure out what to do. It's not a wasted investment, like all of the time I wasted getting good at .BAT files.
And typing "apt install 7zip" isn't exactly hard. Or "7zip x [myfile.7z]".
https://ubuntucinnamon.org/ (recommended for new players)
https://linuxmint.com/ (recommended for students)
Ubuntu Desktop 24 LTS: Kernel 6.0.8 will work on older GPU/Laptop hardware, but OS will be deprecated in 2029
Ubuntu Desktop 26 LTS will be out in a few months: Will be supported till 2038, but note old GPU drivers may not work on more modern Linux Kernels above >6.0.15
The normal Ubuntu Desktop requires a few days to make it usable, and a lot of customization to make it enjoyable. However, network printer and webcam access is usually trivial to install. google equipment installs before you buy... ymmv
Dual boot from two SSD if you need to work on the machine. You will swear less when (not if) you break something, and not everything windows works in Wine or kvm. =3
You didn't need 7zip, you can extract compressed tars natively. In fact, IntelliJ's docs tell you exactly what command to run.
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/installation-guide.html#...
sudo tar -xzf idea-*.tar.gz -C /optKDE has the "discover" app which does what it looks like you want (including installing intellij with 1 click). [1]
There's also bazaar for gnome which offers similar things [2]
Ubuntu also offers the "snap store" which similarly offers a 1 click install of apps. [3]
The mistake you made is going directly to the app distributors for installation. Because there's no unified linux it's impossible for app distributors to offer a single way to install their apps. They can't count on your PC having anything. That's why intellij distributes with a tar.
This, however, is typical in linux. Using a package manager is how you do things in standard linux, those package managers have just been typically ran by the command line.
[1] https://apps.kde.org/discover/
[2] https://github.com/kolunmi/bazaar
[3] https://ubuntu.com/blog/trust-and-security-in-the-snap-store
Maybe try something more commercial like Zorin OS?
> yet it still is not there in usability
I want to wholeheartedly disagree with you. Nothing comes close to Linux in terms of usability for me, but a lot of it is about what you're used to, I've used Window's, I've used Mac, Mac I could live with, but I'll never intentionally use Windows again.
> To be specific what irked me today when I tested them was installing new programs. On Cachy, I wanted to test jetbrains IDE
Ok, let's begin; this one is partly JetBrains' fault, and partly yours.
You can open a terminal and type `paru jetbrains-toolbox`, hit enter a couple of times and it's installed. Don't know what `paru` is? I recommend reading the frankly excellent documentation from CachyOS[0].
> or extract(no option in dir manager or decompression program) the content in Cachy
You didn't specify which Desktop Environment you chose, this is important when helping newcomers because each comes with its own set of tools; but in Gnome's (what I use) the file manager, called Nautilus, I can right-click almost any archive type and will be presented with "Extract", "Extract to..." as well as a few other options. I just looked up how KDE does it, in case you're using that, the file manager is called Dolphin, and apparently you might need to install an archive tool first such as Ark and/or 7zip, gotta give you that one, I'm a little shocked, that's a pretty shitty OOBE in my opinion, but a quick search and you'll now probably be confused because the solution is here[1] but they say to use `apt install...` which you don't have on an Arch based distro. But once you know what the file managers you do have access to are, it should be easier.
> So I wanted to get 7zip but there was no linux version
There certainly _is_ a Linux version. `paru 7zip` and I get at least 3 legit options; the base package, an architecture optimised package, and a GUI for it, as well as a dozen or two community options. You can also try the standard arch package manager aptly named "pacman"; `sudo pacman -S 7zip` and it installs it for me after I hit enter to confirm, don't even need to choose the package. Wtf is `sudo`? That's how Administrator is typically done in Linux.
> Cachy has its own packages that can be opened(website) via its welcome screen(otherwise there is no program manager - no snaps, flatpacks
On Gnome there is "Software" which supports Flatpaks as well as other package types; don't worry about snaps, you don't want them, and there's Octopi from CachyOS. In KDE there's a GUI called "Discover". There are a bunch of others such as Bazaar which you mentioned.
Usability really isn't an issue in Linux once you know the way of your distro; If you're used to Windows, then it's _different_, sure, and in that case I'd suggest taking an hour to read the CachyOS docs; Arch Wiki (CachyOS is based on Arch) is also an amazing resource for all things Linux, and learn a little about how software management is different, we don't (usually) pull random crap from websites, we install from package managers, and sometimes compile the source ourselves.
If you didn't choose one of the two DEs I've mentioned (Gnome, KDE), I'd recommend giving them a go, they're both very mature and usable. If you're into Discord, I can suggest hitting up the CachyOS or another distro's Discord servers, there's lots of helpful people there willing to help, if you had any other questions give me a shout.
[0] https://wiki.cachyos.org/cachyos_basic/navigation-guide/ [1] https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-add-extract-here-right-clic...
I think that's an artifact from running just the liveimage and not installing it fully to the VM. I'm 99% certain Ark is included in a default Cachy/KDE install.
Anyhow.. "You can open a terminal and type".. yeah, no. This is exactly what I or any other Windows/desktop user does not want to be doing on a desktop computer. Linux always promised to get rid of this "just use terminal bro", which is what being a desktop OS is all about, but it never got there..it seems.
The premise of my test was to see whether the OS is ready out of the box(the main point of a linux distribution, after all). But neither was. Again, I am not saying it is not usable. I am just saying it requires more work to be put into it from the get-go than I am willing to put in, despite having the skill and knowledge to do so.
Then stay on windows. You'll have the same issues with MacOS from time to time.
If you're willing to learn things you have plenty of options. If not? You'll be limited. Tradeoffs.