Audience Feedback on Selfhosting

(drumming)

Welcome back to Linux Prepper.

Hey everybody, welcome to this experimental podcast

where we talk about fully open tools, Linux, open VSD,

but also just things like enjoying your life

and ways to use technology for offline, you know, just in

real life activities and having a good time and enjoying your life. Our goal is

always to use as fully open tooling as possible, but doesn't mean that we'll

succeed. So we'll just get as far as we can. I want to start this episode by

giving a few quick announcements and then we'll jump into

me having my first guest.

So quick announcements.

I will be tabling at Linux Fest Northwest.

That is in Bellingham, Washington.

It is an excellent Linux con.

It is a convention.

It will be happening April 25th to the 27th.

I'm going to be tabling there, which means I will be at a table. You can come up, say hi. I will

be happy to meet you, introduce myself, and I'm going to bring fun goodies for

convention goers to enjoy at the table. And I've been experimenting a lot with

zines and paper crafts and printing. I have a whole episode dedicated to it, which

I look forward to sharing soon. So that's something to look forward to. So I hope to

see you at Linux Fest Northwest. And let's check in on the state of the podcast. The

podcast actually has a forum now. I've put a forum at discuss.James.Network where you can submit

your thoughts and I also will release extensive show notes. So podcasting you can only include

so much information in show notes there's limits. But if you go to discuss.James.Network

you will be able to see more extensive notes or details of projects as I work on them.

So feel free to go to discuss.james.network. You can also create an account and post there if

you want. Or if you are a part of the matrix chat, the posts are being relayed there that are

related to Linux Prepper. So go ahead and check out discuss.James.network and you can check out a

florum forum, it's PHP coded. And yeah, it's off to a nice start. Also, I was asked about a way for

people to submit web based feedback or mobile feedback without an account. So we now have a next cloud form, which is

linked in the show notes. It is a one pager. It's super easy. You can jump on there, leave

me feedback as an alternative to like email. So if you look in the notes on the podcast,

scroll down, there will be a link to a form anyone can fill out. And feel free to send

me suggestions as well or information

about your projects. It's all good. Okay, so yeah. In the next episode I'll give

more details on how people can be a sponsor of the show.

Speaking of sponsors, happy to announce Linux Prepper has its first sponsor and

that is Ameradroid.

Ameradroid is a US-based distributor of single-board computers and home animation products like for Linux, Android, or whatever you might like.

They're a great company based in California and it's an excellent alternative to ordering direct from someone like Pine64 or HardCurnall

who produces o-droids.

Instead, you can go through Ameradroid.

They provide super fast turnaround, excellent customer service for a change.

You can get global shipping from whatever your preferred shipping method is.

They're happy to do that.

I've been a customer with them since 2017 and I've never

had a problem with them. I just went and toured their facility. Super nice people, just normal

people working there and they provide all kinds of goodies. So I will drop a referral link in the

show and I am very thankful to them for sponsoring Linux Prepper.

Be sure to check out emeridroid.com.

You can also use the coupon "Linux Prepper" at checkout.

If you would like to support me, you can do so right now by, I have a PayPal link, but

I'm working on setting up recurring donations and a little web store for merch.

So that's something to look forward to in the future.

It's not quite ready yet, but for the time being,

there is a PayPal link if you'd like to donate

directly to support me.

Otherwise, if you would be willing to share this podcast

with friends, family, enemies, or anyone that might be

interested in it as an enthusiast, I'd really appreciate it.

It's just a small little show and we can grow it together.

So if you like the show, please do share it.

Appreciate you so much for doing that

and thank you for listening.

Let's move right along.

As a little software spotlight,

I'd like to take a moment to give a shout out

to the project Libre Wolf.

Libre Wolf is a fork of Firefox, which has been effectively

de-googled and things like Pocket and other integrations that are forced on new sponsored

links are all removed by default. I actually have been enjoying Libre Wolf a lot because

in the process of setting up some new machines and browsers. I just find I'm a little bit annoyed

by having to make certain system changes. Firefox, of course, can be handled by using

profiles and copying them around. But I think we can all agree that if you have to set up

Firefox on multiple machines, it just becomes kind of annoying to remove all the Google

and the other sponsored stuff

that they are forced to give you by default advertising stuff. So it's nice to have LibreWolf

and spin it up and it's already ready to go. And LibreWolf is a simple enough fork of Firefox.

It stays tight to the regular release cycle and nothing stops you from running it alongside regular Firefox or Chrome.

So I would recommend anyone jump on your package manager and look up LibreWolf.

Link in the show notes.

I'd also like to give a shout out to a website.

I had the thought recently of making a badge called "Works on My Machine"

because we all have that thing that, you know, other people complain about

and we're thinking, "Well, works on My Machine." Well, it that thing that you know other people complain about more thinking works on my machine

Well, it turns out someone beat me to the punch

specifically coding horror coding horror is

horror is a

developer from the discourse project great forum project who

Created a works on my machine badge. I

who created a Works on My Machine badge.

I will drop a link to that in the show notes and that is something that I am planning on providing

at Linux Fest Northwest, my own iteration

of the Works on My Machine badge.

'Cause who doesn't want that?

Works on my machine link in the show notes.

Ooh, before I forget, there's another really cool web project that is on Kickstarter right

now.

That is PixelFed and Loops by Danza.

PixelFed and Loops.

They are sharing platforms that are fully federated.

All the Mastodon, Activity Pub, and the Fediverse.

The specific goal of these projects is Pixel Fed wants to be federated alternative to Instagram

where Loops wants to be a video alternative to TikTok.

Both projects are of course fully open source.

Pixel Fed having been in development since 2018.

You definitely know that Dan's uptakes has worked seriously and there are clients

already available for Android and iOS.

Pixel Fed is a very mature project,

Loops is more recent, and I think it's great

that there's a Kickstarter and I'm happy to say

that it's doing really well, has a $35,000 goal,

it's made about 90,000 right now,

there's just over a day left to go. So if that's something interests you

I'm gonna leave a link for the kinks Kickstarter and be sure to support Dan's up and throw him a few bucks and

I think it's a very laudable goal, you know to make a federated alternative to major social media platforms

Not so different from this very podcast if you don't know

the Not so different from this very podcast. If you don't know, the podcast.James.Network is actually available on the Fediverse from

Mastodon.

If you go to atlinixprepper@podcast.James.Network, you can interact with this podcast from your

federated platform of choice.

And I think it's good to financially donate know, financially donate to other people who are

trying to do the same thing. So if you can, please join me in kicking a few bucks to

dance up. Link in the show notes for the Kickstarter. And without further ado, for this episode,

we're going to move on to our primary segment. I'm happy to announce that I have a couple long form interviews that are coming up.

So that's something to enjoy.

I will be releasing a second podcast episode this month.

That'll be coming out in the next week or so.

And that's also a celebration of the six months of this podcast as of the 11th.

So in the in between time, let's get to our main segment

of this episode, which is your audience feedback.

Here we go.

- So I think a fun thing to talk about

in terms of the show is like some of the feedback

that I got from people said, directly relevant

is this one.

Do you ever plan on having a guest or even a co-host on the show?

Well, bump, bump, bump.

I am recording with another person right now.

And why don't you introduce yourself?

Hello, my name is Henry Bogart.

Whereas I go in the hacker circles, HP, I've been doing tech stuff probably about eight years now.

I can't promise that I'm very good at it,

but somewhere along the way I did run into James at Noisebridge,

and that was really cool.

We seem to hit it off pretty quickly.

We've both been doing self-hosting,

so that's been one of a kind of a recurring topic that we've had.

I've been building out my home lab pretty seriously for the last two years.

I kind of got inspired by a creator on YouTube named TechnoTim to just start small and see where things go.

Now I have a very small rack,

but at least two servers that I can work with here for NAS and for virtualization.

But yeah, so most of my interest in the past several years

have been around system administration, privacy

and security, CTF, stuff like that.

Cool.

Happy to have you on board.

I'm very excited about this. I thought maybe we'll

just go through a couple of pieces of audience feedback and that way you and I could both

just kind of react to them together. It's fun. This is from the last episode that I

just did by Raspberry Pi where I was sending off my old Raspberry Pi device, as a little server devices to friends houses to run services.

And my friends house said there was a loose search protector, which I replaced, and somebody

responded back, concerning the loose search protector, it's a good thing you replaced it.

If you see something like that, and it's mains voltage, always replace it ASAP. Not because it

looks nice, or because the device gets unhooked, but because it's a proper fire hazard.

A whole house could burn down if you have loose mains connections, and that can lead

to electrical sparks.

So I just want to say good point.

I appreciate someone saying that in, but do you ever have experience with

stuff like that?

Bogard, do you ever have experience with loose stuff?

Loose loose wiring and stuff.

Um, you know, I mean, when you think of some terrifying, um, experience with loose stuff? Loose some wiring and stuff.

You know, I mean, when you think of some terrifying incidents, I was working actually.

I did some electrical work back in the day on generators and junction boxes and general

splicing and dicing.

And one day I went to just take a peek at this junction box, like, you know, electrical

box and I somehow arked it with my pliers.

And it arked it.

Yeah, I did.

Okay.

So like when I looked at my pliers, they're essentially melted because they sparked what

they caught on to the main rail or whatever and something else.

So it was totally unintentional.

I really didn't notice it, but it happened so fast.

It was the scariest thing in the world and it could have gone a lot worse, you know,

but apparently had some good insulation on the pliers,

but it did flash in my face and oops, scared me quite bad.

And I could fill my face like kind of warm.

So that's probably a little more terrifying than loose swires,

but I thought I'd share that at least.

- That is terrifying.

Yeah.

Yeah, my experience hasn't been with anything arching,

but I've definitely seen situations where,

you know, the electrical box itself was like

not properly set up in someone's house.

And so, you know, once you start plugging a lot of things, you just start

having to reset the breaker all the time until the breaker box gets broken apart.

So the amperage is like properly managed for especially high power device,

usually higher power than even what we were talking about.

But like, yeah, things that can cause electrical malfunction, obviously a problem.

Um, okay.

Next thing somebody says, the pie is not meant for heavy network traffic.

It cannot handle it.

Now, if you do this on a nook until nook, little x86 box, that would work fine.

Pie, not so much.

You'll probably have a dead pie within a short period of time.

If you want to try it for yourself, go ahead, but before warned,

you will probably have it exhausted over heated dead pie.

I appreciate the positivity on that one.

That's pretty great.

Well, I mean, I've been running these sit for like four years.

So they've been working.

Um, and they're specifically,

user Rads, a case, I mentioned, I think back

in the first or second episode on these Pi 4s,

but it has a really nice, the power for this,

these Raspberry Pi specifically is nicer than normal.

And they've been working just fine with SSDs.

But I think it's true that of course,

set expectations accordingly.

This is not a powerhouse machine,

but that directly coincides with why I'm willing

to give these devices to friends.

It was still a huge financial investment to me upfront,

to put SSD disks on this thing or whatever,

but I'm okay if it disappears.

I'm not worried about,

we're talking about catastrophic failure kind of stuff here,

but I'm not really worried about that.

I'm more worried about things just being unplugged and ignored.

That's the more realistic problem it's going to happen.

No one's going to use it.

In that case, I'm not worried about it, nor am I worried about reclaiming it from the

person.

It's okay if it doesn't work.

That's more where I'm coming

from personally. But I agree that there's other devices that are superior. So I don't

question that.

Yeah, I don't question either. I do agree though that the pie can really put some, you

know, put some power into to you actually learning how to do networking. I mean, that's really one of the more powerful things about it.

And they are actually pretty stable, I think, as far as hardware is concerned.

And I kind of appreciate the fact that you can just kind of drop them in anywhere.

One of the difficulties, I think, especially for people living in the Bay Area who are experimenting

with stuff like this, and I wouldn't say even exclusive to this area, but most people are

kind of forced into smaller places.

You have to live in an apartment just to really afford a place out here.

But I can't have a crazy amount of gear just strewn across my house.

I mean, it's just absurd. So I try to limit my, most of my

equipment into one area and I try to keep it tidy. I can't say I always do that. But I had

similar experience switching to Intel NUC as one of my primary devices for a lot of my proxy

services and stuff like that. And really, really noticed the difference in power,

even though it's not like the newest model or anything,

but very, very stable, very fitting for like

a small Linux server.

And then my Raspberry Pi's became more like

kind of complimentary devices on the network

that were more for experimentation.

And just other weird stuff.

I had worked with another person on PyMox, for example.

I don't know if people are familiar with that,

but it's pretty weird little situation.

- Yeah, so I'll talk about what PyMox is for a second.

- So you can find the script on GitHub.

It's pretty straightforward. If you've done most of this stuff for a second. - So you can find the script on GitHub. It's pretty straightforward.

If you've done most of this stuff for a while,

system administration in a way,

as you probably heard about proxmox,

I have proxmox on my main server that I'm using.

And, you know, I heard about PIMOCs,

and I was like, you can get proxmox on Raspberry Pi,

that seems kind of ridiculous.

[LAUGH]

It's not like the best use case for it,

but as far as like a learning tool again, really, really cool

that you can set up Pimox.

You can set up maybe a couple virtual machines.

You won't get very far.

You have to keep them small.

And of course, the RAM limitations kind of puts you

into sort of corner with that stuff.

But nonetheless, I was able to do set up two PyMox Raspberry Pies, one at my place and

one at somebody else's and set up remote services.

And we were able to basically use each other's VPS is if you want to call it that

To like you know go back and forth and test stuff like we're running red hat on one of them It was weird. It was just like just crazy, you know

There's no like way that it's like sustainable by any means you couldn't use it for longer-term stuff

I mean, I mean you could but I wouldn't recommend it

But nonetheless like learning about stuff like that is really cool, which is just kind

of play with.

Yeah, I'll drop a link to Pymox in the show notes.

But one thing I noticed with it is it hasn't really received any updates.

I'm looking at the GitHub right now.

Pymox 7 anyway, in two years.

Are you still using it?

Do you know?

Do you have a version of it that has more kind of leave it as it is?

I think it was seven maybe.

I want to say at the time that I used it.

Um, but I don't run it anymore.

Um, for that reason, it was just like kind of an experimental thing in a way

for me to learn about proxmox and the interface and like setting up, you know,

VLANs and whatnot.

So, um, I just outgrew it as

all. I would recommend it though. I would highly recommend it. Even if it's a

little outdated, I feel like the repo itself is pretty straightforward. Like

if you're decent enough at like, you know, coding or whatever, you could probably

figure it out or fix stuff that's broken. But yeah, so I mainly switch to the R7610

Racable Workstation from Dell for my virtualization server. It just has a lot of power. It's really

quiet. It's kind of older, but it doesn't really matter. It has a lot of capability. You can put

two processes in it. So I think you can get some decent zions out

of it. And most of the stuff is more affordable to you, which is another reason why it's good.

And you can get up to 512 gigabytes of RAM if you have the two processors. So it's kind

of crazy. It runs SaaS drives too. So I've got like about six terabytes of SAS

storage right now. So I feel like I'm pretty set. It's really awesome to

have. And I only got this I paid this server. I got this server from

like an auction. It was like 50 bucks. It's just kind of absurd. I

haven't put a lot of money into it. And I tend to try to do that if I

can. Because it's just inexpensive hobby to say the least.

That's cool.

Yeah, I was just looking it up and it looks like so.

PyMox 7.

I'll just read what it says just to go back for one sec.

I'll read what it says.

PyMox is a port of Proxmox, right?

Virtual machine service built on Demian and Ubuntu.

That's been made specifically for Raspberry Pi starting with the

four, and it allows you to build a Proxmox cluster with Raspberry Pi's or a hybrid of Raspberry Pi's

and X86 hardware, which you would otherwise have with, you know, Intel Nooks or any regular computer.

So that's the idea, and I did do a quick search and it looks like people are keeping

Variations of pymox going for the pi 5 and beyond but I think the key part of it right is too is it's like it says

approximox cluster of virtual machines

Across multiple computers

But the cool part about this is if you did set it up with a Raspberry Pi, nothing stops you from using that x86 hardware or transitioning into the x86 hardware, which like what bug art's saying and what have I experienced is that's what you just end up doing anyway.

It's a nice, but it's like a fun dip in the pond right like it's a way to get in the shallow end and swim around and be like, oh, this is cool. And then you realize how much better it could be.

It's a good starter point though, for a big world.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I was like the equivalent of like starting a small nest

for your house and then jumping into like a,

some kind of like smaller server

where you have a lot more storage capability.

In the same way, like could run a NAS on pretty

much minimal hardware. And that is a good example. I am the Raspberry Pi. People have totally done

that. You've done that. But when you finally make that jump into an actual server and you get

this crazy amount of storage and the possibilities just kind of open up.

It's just another thing. But yeah, I like that idea of the cluster. I mean, I didn't think about doing that at the time. I just like, sure, you know, I wanted to try it out,

but if I wanted to revisit that whole thing, I'd probably make a like,

a dedicated like one use space on my rack that I have right now and just try to do a cluster that way.

Well, once yeah, so speaking on that front, I haven't talked about this on the show. I don't think at all.

It's just becomes a lot of information, but it's good now.

Like for me personally, I found that once the Pi five came out, I put in a pre-order for two Pi 5s, right?

It's like, "Oh, this is an exciting thing." I put in my pre-order two Pi's and

then you have to order the power supply. You have to order an active cooler case

and that put me somewhere around, you know, $110. But then you can get an adapter that goes above or below the pie to add NVMe

storage directly through a PCIe connection on the device, which is now supported on the regular

pie and not just on the industrial iteration of the pie called the CM. So you could get this device, but you would have to get this adapter plate as well, right? Which kind of mess Pi called the CM. So you could get this device,

but you would have to get this adapter plate as well, right?

Which kind of messes with the whole case thing

'cause now you have this other thing.

So it's like, okay, getting a little janky.

You have this adapter board with a cable

so that you can add an NVMe drive.

That's another 25 bucks plus shipping, it's like 35 bucks.

So I was looking at the cost of it, you know,

as this pre-order was going, and now I'm creeped up towards like $150. And that doesn't include

the NVMe drive. So what I did at that point, because I also was thinking in terms of rock

smocks personally, is I just bought thin clients on eBay, use thin clients,

serve the home, talks about a lot of the mini micro project,

tiny mini micro.

And so I ended up going above what was recommended personally

and I got HP Ryzen thin clients.

So I have thin clients and it was $170,

but then I can upgrade the RAM, I can hold multiple disks.

It's just so much more powerful.

And the Pi 5 itself has a higher power draw.

That's why it needs an active cooler case than ever before.

So it's really not that different from running the thin client.

But power wise, that's why I was thinking about it.

In terms of what I'm getting for the amount of power I'm using,

it was like 12 times the pie plus it's x86.

So it runs anything.

So I just, it was an obvious choice.

And now I have this thin client that has 64 gigs of RAM.

And it's just a much, much better machine.

I don't have the weird cable at the,

out of to an adapter plate.

And it holds more than one disk.

It's just like, yeah, that's crazy better.

It still feels like a lot of machine to me

even to this day, but it's nice to have extra machine

to play with instead of always hating on a limit, you know,

of like, what can I do based on what I have?

And now it's kind of more like, I can do whatever I want.

So anyway, yeah, that's kind of the end of the story of using these devices for a lot

of years.

And then you kind of realize, I mean, I think it's known now, you know, thing clients are

a thing, but you definitely have like reasons to move away, I think, especially with the

Pi 5.

Oh, last thing I'll say on this summit, like little Pi tangent, sorry, is people, well, I heard people talking recently and they were saying like that, you know, the Pi is all

about the GPIO, right?

Like the Pi devices are all about having these GPIO hardware pins exposed on the device that you can make

little electronic projects with.

And you can connect adapters to your own hats.

That's true.

But I think that there is something else to be said about this, which is if that's what

you want, if you want to be able to use a GPIO connector, then you have the entire world of microcontrollers, Arduino, all these

things that you can use. And then if you program them, like you can connect them to a computer,

right? So there's that. There's also the PyPico version of this. And then if you're like,

no, I want the Pi, well, that's what the Pi zeros for also, you have the Pi zero two W for 15 bucks.

for also you have the Pi zero 2w for 15 bucks and it gives you GPIO access with a Raspberry Pi computer bare minimum machine but you know that'll give you the

ability to have a device you can connect to over Wi-Fi and do things with but

you can do the same thing with Arduino's and microcontrollers so it's like and

if you don't want one of those,

I'm just saying if you really don't want one of those,

it's kind of like, what do you want?

You know what I mean?

It's like, 'cause yeah,

those are available to you for a few dollars.

And the Raspberry Pi 5 now is like, you know, 120 plus dollars.

So it goes into an interesting space of practicality in regards to the pie

itself as well. It's kind of like what niche is it filling? And that's where like I've

ended up personally is like, when I have a pie five, if I don't need to use it for a

project, I won't because I don't want to throw a $120 board personally at running my 3D printer.

I would actually downgrade to like the old

Pi 3, which is exactly what I did, because it'll still run everything.

So I'm trying to like downgrade myself to these like lower level devices.

But yeah.

So that's part of the reason I sent away these Raspberry Pi devices.

I've replaced them with more powerful machines. For myself.

Alright, okay.

Oh, here's one from somebody.

I bought a cheap, thin client with an internal space for a 3.5-inch hard drive.

I set it up at my parents' house.

I configured it to automatically connect over tail scale network with WireGuard

and I have a cheap 10 terabyte backup.

There you go.

Whether it's a Nook or any other device, right?

It's like what we're talking about setting up a device you can connect to.

All right.

Let's see. Somebody else says, "I think people have been using the term self-hosted to mean what

we used to call a home PC.

I always thought of a hosted computer, self-hosted, or hosted by a company as meaning a server,

which means it lives in a data center, or a rented box or VPS, and you self-host it

by installing and managing the software yourself.

Of course, if you have good enough internet, you could self-host a server at home, but

considerations are otherwise the same. It would usually not also be your workstation or gaming

computer. Yeah, I think that that's like basically what I think we're, would you agree with this?

Like our internet connections are good enough that you're in a space where you can host

machines from home and it's fine.

Like you don't need a data center.

Yeah.

My, okay.

So first of all, my internet connection is pretty bad.

Like it's not super great.

Like comparatively, like if I think about like connections I had in the

90s or whatever like, you know dial up stuff like but I will also say that like I don't

Like concern myself a ton with how good my internet

Connection is I kind of complain about it a lot, but like the reality is I'm able to

Run tons of services and the majority

of the ones that I'm hosting, self-hosting, you know, only people in my house are accessing

them anyway. So, you know, the kind of latency or any of that kind of stuff doesn't even matter.

I've kind of like moved away from exposing too many services out into the world

from exposing too many services out into the world. Because I'm moving more towards zero trust and just really trying to learn more about

the security side of things.

But anyways, to not tangent off too much, I remember we've had this discussion quite a

bit, but if you really go far back to self-hosting, think about something like the BBS scene. That's where I think of this kind of like origin story is crazy because people were basically making file transfers all over the country

with the most rudimentary equipment possible.

So when I really think about, when I feel like I want to complain about my internet connection

or like my my gear being not you know not strong enough I go back to that and I'm like yeah but

it could be much worse or I could have much more constraints I don't feel like I have a ton it'd be nice to have like faster connection because then I might be able to actually provide more

services to people.

Most of the stuff that I end up doing now, like if I'm doing any kind of services, like

helping people set up their VPS or helping them set up their DNS and email and stuff

like that.

So it doesn't really require me to host anything on my end.

So all of the self-hosting that I'm doing is primarily kind of in the tradition of serves at home.

Like I'm helping my family have, you know,

like cool videos to watch or family pictures or whatever.

You know, just fun stuff, like put up some,

you know, put up a ESP32 and use it to connect

a bunch of Ramolites and just do weird stuff like that.

Like that's fun to me.

I don't know.

Yeah, at this point, yeah, I think self-hosting is about really taking ownership of what you host.

That could be a VPS across the world somewhere. I used to have a ton of VPSs, but then I just felt like it was a bit of a cost to be just experimenting on things that I could do at home.

- Yeah, well said.

And I think a big improvement too, as far as like,

one of the things that's nice about ARM hardware specifically

in relation to like talking about the Pi and stuff

is now that ARM hardware is more ubiquitous

because you have ARM64 architecture support

across the board.

That's really like leveled the plane.

So that's the reason PIMOCs that we were just talking about

or is a thing because now you have this native 64-bit support

but it takes away the,

it's kind of despecializing the need for a specific device.

It's like it's more about do you have arm 64 or do you have x 86,

64 or now risk?

Um, and that's really the only thing that matters.

So as long as you have that, you can use these different devices together.

And like the limit you're going to run into is the hardware itself, right?

Like if the hardware doesn't have an ethernet port, that's annoying.

It doesn't have a hard drive.

That's annoying.

But other than it's more about like,

what are you willing to tolerate now

in relation to these devices?

But things are supported well,

especially with virtual machines and containers.

It's basically just, that's all that matters

with architecture.

Nobody cares what your device is anymore.

Yeah.

All right. I think also, I just want to respond to what you were just saying, Bogard, of like the power of running your own devices at home, like you're saying is,

you're just empowering yourself to try things. It should be a fun thing. It shouldn't be like a

stress thing. And it's not necessarily production, either, right? Which is like something that you and I connect back on is like,

when you're trying to host something for a lot of people,

that's different from when you're just testing something.

And because if it needs to be up all the time,

I think that's what we're talking about.

Having a service like, for example,

a video platform that you're going to have people having meetings on every day, like that is

a problem. Like we have personally experienced the setting of this call. It's like, it just

needs to be working, because you need to get stuff done. But nothing stops you from setting

up these tools yourself. If as long as you can support it at home, and we can, you know,

test it on a small scale,

and that part's cool.

And if we can make it work, then it's good.

But sometimes it just takes time, right?

That's like the advantage of the home lab.

That's what I think of it.

It's like a testing ground.

And by having devices too that aren't at your own home,

you're distributing out that testing space

like your sandbox into multiple sandboxes to play in.

And this is a good thing.

So yeah, I feel like that's like the big advantage.

10. What's that mean?

We only have 10 minutes left. That's all. Okay.

All right. So do do do. here's another comment. I

See you are trying to make a home theater PC

Oh, this is from the last episode where I was talking about giving one of these devices to a friend

Setting it up so that they would have access to watch jelly fin

Videos on their TV. I just set up the Roku app and added it to the machine

on their TV, I just set up the Roku app and added it to the machine.

So this person said, you were just setting up

a home theater PC, HTPC.

That would have been a clearer term to use.

But related to this talk, it's like,

is that what I was doing?

'Cause I think what I'm trying to do,

like a home theater PC,

what I think what that is in my mind

is that is traditionally a device that's plugged into your TV.

As like an Apple TV would be or a stick or something

with like a remote to watch videos on.

And when I was thinking of like was having a device

that's, it's not important that it's connected to the TV.

It's important that it's connected over a wired connection as strongly as possible.

And then adding a service that someone could use so they felt like they were getting some practical

application out of the box and not just having my machine at their house and it wasn't giving them

anything. So the my intention with this box is, I want to run whatever I want to run on it

or whatever they want.

I just wanted to start from somewhere.

But just because it's running media services, I think that's just a healthy end for the average

person.

But that's not my intended stopping point.

Nor theirs, they're already asking me about other services they can use besides that.

If that makes sense. But right, you got to give

somebody an end when you're hosting services at their house. I feel like give them backups or

give them something. Would you agree? Yeah, I agree. It definitely has to have some sort of value.

Not everybody wants to experiment and do crazy stuff that we're into, but they might want to

and do crazy stuff that we were into, but they might wanna say, hey, well, what is Jelly Fin?

Let me try this out.

What is Plex?

How do I use these things?

I'm like, why is that interesting to me?

And I know at my home, the main thing is

this dissatisfaction with the streaming services

that in the beginning, everything was commercial free

and just the prices were lower.

And now, I went and controlled over the actual content. The thing with having Jellyfin,

which, by the way, is integrated into some TVs already with the apps. For example,

the Amazon Fire TV, not that I'm getting any money out of saying that,

but having that built in is pretty ideal.

Same thing with Plex.

Plex will be on things like Visio, usually.

- Server?

- Not the server necessarily, but the client.

So yeah, so you can have the client built in

for your family members, maybe they're not technical,

but they can operate a client

that looks a lot like Netflix or feels a lot like Netflix.

But that's a huge value, right?

Like your favorite show goes off of Netflix or whatever, and somehow you're able to provide

that for a family member, "Hey, I don't know if I want to say what TV shows or anything. Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, you can get them that show and then they, you know, kind of a kind of like a stop gap for things that don't exist on traditional services like Netflix or Hulu.

Yeah, watching all those public domain shows.

Yeah, you know, man.

From the twenties.

So here's another good line.

I wouldn't trust a computer donated by Eddie Wood, let alone for self-hosting personal data audit.

No, thanks.

That's cool.

I mean, I wouldn't trust anything.

I send anyone either, you know, what kind of viruses I might have put on there.

Well, yeah, but also like, that's why you're giving it to someone who wants it. Like, you're

not giving it to like a stranger on the street. Like, hey, you want to you want to server, dude?

I mean, where are they handing out servers? Like that. Anyway, I'll take them.

Oh, that's true. Let me know too.

Here's another one. Oh, this was in relation to setting up - Me know too. (laughing)

Here's another one. - Oh, this was in relation to setting up MDNS, local DNS,

when you're, so as part of a guide

that I was writing for the last episode

for when you wanna expose services locally,

you have the dot local domain.

And this person saying, don't use dot local as an internal domain. It could cause problems.

You can now use dot internal. It was recently reserved for this purpose.

And I looked it up and that is true as of last, uh, I think 2023.

Yeah, that sounds right. Um, I was watching a webinar recently and someone

else had mentioned that too, um too about, you know, preferring

internal over local. I haven't tried it personally. I never really have to do that for the most

part because like with the client services like Jellyfin, for example, it's already

baked in for most people. Like I use, you know, Jellyfin on my phone to you and I'll

stream it to my TV

because my other TV doesn't have Jellifen so I'll just use it that way. But I mean,

that's just one example. Some of the like audio things that I was experimenting with,

for example, were a little weird and I had to do some weird DNS tricks to get them out

to the people that wanted to try them out. But you know, definitely, I want to try it.

Let's try internal.

I mean, I just wonder at what point do we get like more functionally useful domains?

Like, why can't we just have dot in or dot you?

Like, why do we have to go for it for full internal?

It sounds nerdy, you know, like website internal.

Yeah.

Like it's is website. Donnie's like, you know, there you go.

Less type aid. We're lazy. Yeah. Send us some letters.

I always try to save letters. I hate them.

Stupid letters.

Well, it sounds like we're hitting the end of our meeting time almost.

Do you want to start a new session or do you want to call it? Well, it sounds like we're hitting the end of our meeting time almost.

Do you want to start a new session or do you want to call it?

I think I'm going to have to call it because I got a run of the pharmacy.

So yeah, let's do a quick wrap up to gather.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, chop.

So this is, uh, this is awesome.

But I've been so excited to record this together.

You and I go back and like,

we're really bonded through this exact kind of thing.

So just let me talk about not in recording,

running services together for other people,

testing services for ourselves.

And I'm excited for that in relation to the

continuing of the show, because you're just of the same cloth, you know, we're like, and we can

talk about it more at length. But I think it was just really fun to respond to people's feedback

from the show together. And just like getting, you know, getting people a chance to kind of

experience this and for me to experience it too, like just chatting with another person on the show in a more casual way.

It's nice.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me on, of course.

It is also good to kind of talk about our shared torture with all the self-hosting stuff. I think that it's encouraging to

have people to share this information with. I have plenty of people that

all reach out to you if I can't figure something out. And similarly, they'll

reach out to me if they can't figure something out. And I think it's good to

have those kind of bonds and friendships and community. That's I think it's good to have those kind of, you know, bonds and friendships, you know, and community. That's really

what it's all about.

Definitely.

So I think what we'll do probably is you and I will pick

pick up and chat more in the future, because it'd be fun to

keep keep going. I feel like it's a good starter. And also, I guess, good moment to note that I've done a couple long format

interviews with people now. None of it's been released, but one with the

journalist, one with a open source developer. And I intend to post those.

I'm curious for people's feedback too, in regards to this, you know, like what you

think, because this is a continued experiment the show structure having guests.

Obviously, I love chatting with my friend, so I'm happy to do that anytime. It just feels nice.

And it's also fun to respond to audience feedback, which I don't normally do as much of, but I think it's good.

So, yeah, send me your thoughts on it. And do you have any

parting thoughts in relation to anything we discussed or you want people to think about

where we meet again?

No, I'll just share the call to arms here. If you haven't, you know, self-hosting was

kind of a tail end of this. If you haven't started self-hosting, start small and just

kind of get something going and use it as an opportunity to learn.

Don't think about it like you got to have a data center in your garage that

would be wild and if you do invite me over so I can see it.

Sorry, a closed source win in this one.

Okay, I have to give a little bit of backstory, whether it gets shared or not.

We tried to use on-weekaster, which is a Jesse based recording service, and we used

it before and it worked fine.

But then this time total fail, couldn't get it to work,

couldn't get the audio to work, just wouldn't go.

And then tried recording it on a Grafino-S call,

but apparently that's like broken since 2023.

So that didn't work.

And now we're on Zoom success.

- Yes.

- Great. I don't know if I'll include that or not, but it's a funny backstory.

We'll laugh about it later.

That takes for some time.

Okay. (dramatic music)