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Vermillion
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2007
- Messages
- 4,420
*Full disclosure* - I'm not here to bash Google and call them evil. I'm simply a person who cares about his privacy and his families privacy and there's less and less privacy nowadays. So if you're in this thread to Google bash please go elsewhere. Google sucks. Apple sucks. Samsung sucks. Social media sucks. LLMs suck. Privacy should not be taken lightly especially in growing LLM (you can call it AI if you really want to) movement.
******
So I've been doing the self-hosting bit for awhile. Initially just small things like Vaultwarden (Rust based Bitwarden https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden ), Pi-hole, and Plex. However, in recent months I've moved services around and moved more and more off of Google and into my own house, so I wanted to share my experiences. I know many here would like to do the same and just haven't crossed that bridge yet and maybe some of this information can help them.
I'll start things off by stating: Leaving Google is incredibly hard to do. Many of their services are simply superior to anything else out there. I've been through so many other Maps apps recently it makes me sick. The only one that gets it right is Google Maps. The tight integration with Chrome and Android only makes it better. So I can't leave Google entirely. I'm just reducing my footprint to be basically my phone and Chrome on my computer. GrapheneOS may be in my Pixel's future as well to further reduce the footprint.
While I still use my Gmail account I've probably moved about 70% off it and into Proton mail with my custom addresses from my domain. It's a slow process but it's also a very rewarding one. All mail flowing into Gmail is automatically forwarded to my proton account and filtered there into appropriate folders. Then I try to go back and update the important accounts with the appropriate Proton mail account. My Gmail account is from the very first Beta all those decades ago. It's very liberating starting a new emaill address with multiple other addresses so that I can limit spam and just clean up my email from the ground up. It's been a very rewarding experience.
I find myself self-hosting more and more things to replace Google services. I've also replaced other services like Plex after they made changes to how they do things. I'll attempt to explain everything. I use a Protectli Vault running OPNsense with Wireguard as my VPN for when I'm away from the house. That way I can safely access all my data without having anything exposed.
Vaultwarden - runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Ubuntu Server 24.04. NGINX reverse proxy runs on this Pi4 as well which handles being the proxy for all my self-hosted services that require HTTPS so currently I have three running through NGINX. Watchtower is used to keep the NGINX and Vaultwarden Docker containers up to date. Simple and easy setup. It just works. It's nice to know my passwords are mine and mine alone. Cloud storage be damned.
Pi-hole runs on a different RPi4. Currently the only thing on that RPi4. Ubuntu Server 24.04. It acts as my DHCP server as well. Such a great piece of software.
My Plex is now Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/). I left Plex when they added that bullshit Social Media component and when they banned that hosting site that was overseas. Yes, I understand that it was all pirated stuff overseas and it was people selling access to their Plex server for illegal purposes but for Plex to know what is being watched and to know it was pirated files is downright scary. I say that when I don't do that stuff. My files are hand ripped by me. Plex doesn't need to know that information. It's none of their damn business what files are on MY system. Jellyfin has been quite a good replacement. There are few things that Plex does better at the moment, but overall I don't miss Plex one bit.
Nextcloud - Google Drive replacement. Runs on an old Dell E7270 laptop and data is stored on my Synology NAS. Server is running on Ubuntu 24.04 and Nextcloud is actually the Snap version. Very easy setup especially being a Snap. What an amazing piece of software. Absolutely love it. So many great add-on apps as well. Recipe managers, Google Keep replacements, etc. Works great. Stable. Fast. The only thing I haven't done is bring up the Google Docs replacement using OnlyOffice. I'll get to that at some point but for now just using mapped folders and opening directly in OnlyOffice works just fine. Sync on my phone works flawlessly. Sync on all the computers in the house is flawless. My wife doesn't even realize that all the folders on her Kubuntu install are actually mapped to her Nextcloud account on the NAS. So she can't lose anything if the laptop dies because there's nothing actually on it.
My most recent addition though is a true Google Photos replacement. Immich. https://immich.app/ Running on another old Dell E7270 with Ubuntu Server 24.04. This was a bitch to get running because I wanted the data to be stored on the NAS. Took a bit of Googling to find out how exactly to get the Docker Compose file and the .env file to properly map to the NFS share. But wow, what a great piece of FOSS. Web interface is very much like Google Photos so it's familiar and easy to use. Uploads on the phone are flawless. I just need to get the Hardware accelerated machine learning running so that it can do all the recognition based things done. The hardware acceleration is very cool because they have containers that automatically can pass through to an Nvidia card for CUDA on a different computer. So I'll probably set that up on my son's laptop since he has an Nvidia GPU that I believe is supported. It's supposed to be very quick and easy to do. So I'll be diving into that over the next few days.
For importing everything from Google Photos I used an app called Immich Go. https://github.com/simulot/immich-go Straight forward command line tool that parses all the zip files themselves that you download when you export from Google Photos. Here's a video I found that shows exactly how to use it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf25QQaFj0M
I've also been dabbling in NixOS. I use it on my main computer now after many years of using Arch. Love Nix. Lots to learn though. Will probably go through a few more rebuilds. Right now I'm on the Unstable channel. That's required for things like KDE Plasma 6. However, I don't want to be on Unstable. There is a way to stay on Stable but since NixOS is declarative you can make it so that apps like a web browser, or Plasma 6 and other Plasma apps like Kate are in the unstable channel but the rest is on the stable branch. Doing it that way gives you that immutability that makes NixOS so great. I can see myself slowly rebuilding my servers with NixOS over Ubuntu Server in the future. NixOS as a server on a btrfs or perhaps bcachefs in the future and those snapshots being sent to the NAS on a nightly basis would be a thing of beauty.
******
So I've been doing the self-hosting bit for awhile. Initially just small things like Vaultwarden (Rust based Bitwarden https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden ), Pi-hole, and Plex. However, in recent months I've moved services around and moved more and more off of Google and into my own house, so I wanted to share my experiences. I know many here would like to do the same and just haven't crossed that bridge yet and maybe some of this information can help them.
I'll start things off by stating: Leaving Google is incredibly hard to do. Many of their services are simply superior to anything else out there. I've been through so many other Maps apps recently it makes me sick. The only one that gets it right is Google Maps. The tight integration with Chrome and Android only makes it better. So I can't leave Google entirely. I'm just reducing my footprint to be basically my phone and Chrome on my computer. GrapheneOS may be in my Pixel's future as well to further reduce the footprint.
While I still use my Gmail account I've probably moved about 70% off it and into Proton mail with my custom addresses from my domain. It's a slow process but it's also a very rewarding one. All mail flowing into Gmail is automatically forwarded to my proton account and filtered there into appropriate folders. Then I try to go back and update the important accounts with the appropriate Proton mail account. My Gmail account is from the very first Beta all those decades ago. It's very liberating starting a new emaill address with multiple other addresses so that I can limit spam and just clean up my email from the ground up. It's been a very rewarding experience.
I find myself self-hosting more and more things to replace Google services. I've also replaced other services like Plex after they made changes to how they do things. I'll attempt to explain everything. I use a Protectli Vault running OPNsense with Wireguard as my VPN for when I'm away from the house. That way I can safely access all my data without having anything exposed.
Vaultwarden - runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Ubuntu Server 24.04. NGINX reverse proxy runs on this Pi4 as well which handles being the proxy for all my self-hosted services that require HTTPS so currently I have three running through NGINX. Watchtower is used to keep the NGINX and Vaultwarden Docker containers up to date. Simple and easy setup. It just works. It's nice to know my passwords are mine and mine alone. Cloud storage be damned.
Pi-hole runs on a different RPi4. Currently the only thing on that RPi4. Ubuntu Server 24.04. It acts as my DHCP server as well. Such a great piece of software.
My Plex is now Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/). I left Plex when they added that bullshit Social Media component and when they banned that hosting site that was overseas. Yes, I understand that it was all pirated stuff overseas and it was people selling access to their Plex server for illegal purposes but for Plex to know what is being watched and to know it was pirated files is downright scary. I say that when I don't do that stuff. My files are hand ripped by me. Plex doesn't need to know that information. It's none of their damn business what files are on MY system. Jellyfin has been quite a good replacement. There are few things that Plex does better at the moment, but overall I don't miss Plex one bit.
Nextcloud - Google Drive replacement. Runs on an old Dell E7270 laptop and data is stored on my Synology NAS. Server is running on Ubuntu 24.04 and Nextcloud is actually the Snap version. Very easy setup especially being a Snap. What an amazing piece of software. Absolutely love it. So many great add-on apps as well. Recipe managers, Google Keep replacements, etc. Works great. Stable. Fast. The only thing I haven't done is bring up the Google Docs replacement using OnlyOffice. I'll get to that at some point but for now just using mapped folders and opening directly in OnlyOffice works just fine. Sync on my phone works flawlessly. Sync on all the computers in the house is flawless. My wife doesn't even realize that all the folders on her Kubuntu install are actually mapped to her Nextcloud account on the NAS. So she can't lose anything if the laptop dies because there's nothing actually on it.
My most recent addition though is a true Google Photos replacement. Immich. https://immich.app/ Running on another old Dell E7270 with Ubuntu Server 24.04. This was a bitch to get running because I wanted the data to be stored on the NAS. Took a bit of Googling to find out how exactly to get the Docker Compose file and the .env file to properly map to the NFS share. But wow, what a great piece of FOSS. Web interface is very much like Google Photos so it's familiar and easy to use. Uploads on the phone are flawless. I just need to get the Hardware accelerated machine learning running so that it can do all the recognition based things done. The hardware acceleration is very cool because they have containers that automatically can pass through to an Nvidia card for CUDA on a different computer. So I'll probably set that up on my son's laptop since he has an Nvidia GPU that I believe is supported. It's supposed to be very quick and easy to do. So I'll be diving into that over the next few days.
For importing everything from Google Photos I used an app called Immich Go. https://github.com/simulot/immich-go Straight forward command line tool that parses all the zip files themselves that you download when you export from Google Photos. Here's a video I found that shows exactly how to use it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf25QQaFj0M
I've also been dabbling in NixOS. I use it on my main computer now after many years of using Arch. Love Nix. Lots to learn though. Will probably go through a few more rebuilds. Right now I'm on the Unstable channel. That's required for things like KDE Plasma 6. However, I don't want to be on Unstable. There is a way to stay on Stable but since NixOS is declarative you can make it so that apps like a web browser, or Plasma 6 and other Plasma apps like Kate are in the unstable channel but the rest is on the stable branch. Doing it that way gives you that immutability that makes NixOS so great. I can see myself slowly rebuilding my servers with NixOS over Ubuntu Server in the future. NixOS as a server on a btrfs or perhaps bcachefs in the future and those snapshots being sent to the NAS on a nightly basis would be a thing of beauty.