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I've always found it too difficult to choose the "decentralized" option for many services. It's just not convenient enough to spin up my own gitlab server, or o

I've always found it too difficult to choose the "decentralized" option for many services. It's just not convenient enough to spin up my own gitlab server, or own email. I tried to do both of those things a while ago when I was still new to Linux, and gave up due to the number of steps involved which I inevitably fucked up. The solution for me would be packages which hold my hand through the install process to make installing such software as easy as possible. Obviously, packaging software in this way would take way more work, and people qualified to do this would rather package more software rather than hold some noob's hand. That being said, hopefully in the future when software gets even more mature, repackaging will become less necessary, and this type of packages might become more common, allowing decentralized systems to be easy enough to set up that they become common.

voltagex_ 8y ago
I saw someone post on Twitter saying they were tired of being their own sysadmin. It's true - I could set up my own mail server, my own Git hosting etc etc, but why would I? I'd rather just pay Fastmail for email and GitHub for some private repos.
- kennxl 8y ago
  Decentralized =! inconvenience
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Except that, 99% of the time, it does.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  For the same reason that you don't opt for a dictator even though it is more convenient than democracy (until it isn't, at which point there is little you can do about it). Also, you could also instead pay people to develop easier solutions for self-hosting. Or you could buy a service from a smaller hosting provider. There is more than the extremes of "google is email" and "I have to hand-carve my mail server".
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    So you are suggesting it is a moral obligation to choose a smaller provider, even if the largest provider is better? Centralization happens because someone ends up doing it better than everyone else, and so everyone chooses to use that provider and they become the dominant force. I get the need for diversity, but as an individual, I am going to choose the best provider, even if they are the biggest one.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      > So you are suggesting it is a moral obligation to choose a smaller provider, even if the largest provider is better? Maybe, but the world really is too complex to break it down to such a simple question, it obviously is a tradeoff with many more factors to consider. > Centralization happens because someone ends up doing it better than everyone else, and so everyone chooses to use that provider and they become the dominant force. Well, but does it? I mean, no doubt such cases do exist, sure, but if you really look into how companies do become dominant, that is only one of many factors, and sometimes not even a necessary one. > I get the need for diversity, but as an individual, I am going to choose the best provider, even if they are the biggest one. Well, but how do you evaluate what "the best provider" is? You might be comparing functionality, say. Or price. Or speed. Or any other property of the product as you could now choose to use it. And obviously all of those are important things to consider. But my suggestion isn't that you should follow some abstract moral teaching because some ideology says that this is the right way, and the only right way. My point is that it may even be in our very own interest to choose a solution that is inferior in terms of current functionality/price/speed/whatever because there are long-term costs attached to the superior solution that actually make it more expensive, all things considered, than using the inferior solution now. So, arguably, the currently technically inferior option with a lower total cost would actually the better solution. To maybe make it more practical, but without any claim to being realistic, the numbers are obviously just made up: Let's assume that using Gmail saves you 10 minutes every day vs. using Thunderbird. Now, Gmail is privately owned, so if everyone chose to use Gmail, they would effectively have the monopoly over email. At that point, they have every incentive to add proprietary functionality for the sole purpose of making interoperability difficult. Which could prevent a new competitor from entering the market what would invent a new email workflow that would save you a further 10 minutes every day. Now, does choosing Gmail actually save you time overall? And is Gmail the better product if using Thunderbird now would lead to you being able to save 20 minutes a days a few years down the road? This isn't about some sort of diversity for diversity's sake, this is about which of those options actually is in our very own long-term interest, and monopolies have a strong tendency to be very much not in the interest of the customer. So, really, if anything, I would suggest that there is a moral obligation to watch out for people/organizations accumulating too much power and to prevent them from obtaining it if the long-term damage that that concentration of power can do is worse than the short-term benefits obtained from using their offerings.
- coaxial 8y ago
  Have you tried mailcow? I find it strikes a pretty good balance between running your own mailserver while not getting overwhelmed with details. It runs in containers and provides a webserver, webmail, caldav, spam filter, updater... I have made an ansible role that will back up to a Borg repository every hour as well as restoring the latest backup upon installation if you need inspiration: https://galaxy.ansible.com/coaxial/mailcow/ https://galaxy.ansible.com/coaxial/mailcow/ If you use your own domain name, you can set mailcow to sync with your Gmail account so you have all your emails in mailcow and then pull the plug on Gmail without losing anything. I find it runs pretty well for me on a server with only 2gb of ram.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    If you are on Windows, the equivalent is smartermail. For a fee it also supports ActiveSync, which simplifies client configuration and gives pseudo-push.
- simias 8y ago
  I'm my own sysadmin (for personal email, small HTTP server, an OpenVPN and a few other minor services for personal use) and while it did take me a non-negligible amount of time to get things running smoothly it now only requires a few minutes of attention every other week to apply security updates and make sure my backups are running smoothly. In exchange for that I have total control over my data and basically unlimited customization potential. I'm definitely not planning on stopping that. I do use Github regularly however, but it's because of the "social network" aspect. If you want to interact with many open source projects it has to be on github nowadays. The network effect is strong.
  - bobmichael 8y ago
    I want to make that switch, but am rather intimidated by my inexperience in that domain. Are there any guides or tutorials you've used that you'd recommend?
    - simias 8y ago
      Not a single tutorial comes to mind but you generally find a wealth of resources and tutorials online about setting up anything you might need. Always start by setting up a strict firewall and then whitelist cautiously anything you need as you set up the rest. Don't bother with SELinux. Be very careful with your Postfix (or if you're masochistic, sendmail) config as it's rather (needlessly IMHO) intricate and it's easy to end up with a configuration that appears to work but is extremely broken. In particular if you end up configuring an open relay by mistake spammers are going to have a lot of fun with your server but you'll end up blacklisted everywhere. My "stack" is nginx for web, postfix + dovecot + spamassassin for email (+ roundcube when I wanted a webmail). Postfix was by far the trickiest to configure, although if you find a good tutorial online and can spare a couple of hours to understand how it all works it's not too bad.
      - neop1x 8y ago
        I have similar setup but use Exim instead of Postfix. And I am still glad I host my own services. Yes, it took time but it will work as I want it forever. Only lazy people prefer ready-made cloud services - yes, it's convenient - but it's more costly, you lose control over your data and they are constantly redesigning and reinventing something. You never know when they sell the business or increase prices, ban or limit you.
ttsda 8y ago
I got tired of managing all that software so I just moved to containers. The Docker Hub has pretty much all I need, and if it doesn't, it's much easier to get it working than spinning a new VM or trying to install it together with a bunch of other software and keep them all up to date.
matteeyah 8y ago
We package GitLab with Omnibus - it makes the installation experience a breeze. See https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/ https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/ for more info. We also offer a hosted service (GitLab.com), if that's more convenient.
koolba 8y ago
Eh? It’s literally three shell commands to install GitLab. One to add their GPG key, one to add the upstream repo, and one to apt-get install the package. I bet there’s a curl | bash script to do all three as “one step”. If you’re going to complain about something, at least pick something legit like managing backups or server uptime. The install itself couldn’t be simpler.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >Eh? It’s literally three shell commands to install GitLab As if installing gitlab was the last step in setting up a highly available and disaster safe git server.
  - yoavm 8y ago
    100% agreed. Maintaining a self hosted web service is a demanding task. It's not about updating to get some new features right when they're out - it's about security, and it's a real pain. The installation can get messed, so what? You're not using the tool yet. You can get a new VM. But when you're updating the machine the holds your code (heck, even GitLab.com had their issues with updates!), or the machine that holds your mail service - things get scary. Installation is not at all the issue.
    - coaxial 8y ago
      The approach in taking to self hosted services is that if it's down for an hour or even a couple of days it's fine since I'm the main user. For disaster recovery, I put everything in ansible playbooks and roles. The role also takes care of setting up hourly backups (with Borg) and will import the latest backup when setting up the service. Because backups are separate, I can delete the last couple of backups if they've been compromised. It's obviously not as resilient as using the centralized equivalent, but it feels like a decent trade off. Still iterating so discussions welcome.
      - dcbadacd 8y ago
        How beefy is your machine?
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
Have you tried Gitea [0]? It's incredibly easy to setup, and if you run it on Debian you can setup Unattended Upgrades [1] once then you pretty much never have to worry about it again. [0] https://docs.gitea.io/en-US/ https://docs.gitea.io/en-US/ [1] https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades
Moru 8y ago
Decentralized doesn't mean you have to host everything yourself, there are many other companies to pay to host things outside your server. You don't want everything hanging centralized on your hardware anyway, if your server dies, everything is down.
- neop1x 8y ago
  That's true, except it is not common for a server to "die" every second day. It is not a problem to have uptimes in years. But due to updates it is reasonable to have a few minute downtime every few months. If you require 100% high availability (which only handful of people and companies really need) then you can set up a cluser on Kubernetes/Docker.

voltagex_ 8y ago

I saw someone post on Twitter saying they were tired of being their own sysadmin. It's true - I could set up my own mail server, my own Git hosting etc etc, but why would I? I'd rather just pay Fastmail for email and GitHub for some private repos.

kennxl 8y ago
Decentralized =! inconvenience
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Except that, 99% of the time, it does.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
For the same reason that you don't opt for a dictator even though it is more convenient than democracy (until it isn't, at which point there is little you can do about it). Also, you could also instead pay people to develop easier solutions for self-hosting. Or you could buy a service from a smaller hosting provider. There is more than the extremes of "google is email" and "I have to hand-carve my mail server".
- cortesoft 8y ago
  So you are suggesting it is a moral obligation to choose a smaller provider, even if the largest provider is better? Centralization happens because someone ends up doing it better than everyone else, and so everyone chooses to use that provider and they become the dominant force. I get the need for diversity, but as an individual, I am going to choose the best provider, even if they are the biggest one.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    > So you are suggesting it is a moral obligation to choose a smaller provider, even if the largest provider is better? Maybe, but the world really is too complex to break it down to such a simple question, it obviously is a tradeoff with many more factors to consider. > Centralization happens because someone ends up doing it better than everyone else, and so everyone chooses to use that provider and they become the dominant force. Well, but does it? I mean, no doubt such cases do exist, sure, but if you really look into how companies do become dominant, that is only one of many factors, and sometimes not even a necessary one. > I get the need for diversity, but as an individual, I am going to choose the best provider, even if they are the biggest one. Well, but how do you evaluate what "the best provider" is? You might be comparing functionality, say. Or price. Or speed. Or any other property of the product as you could now choose to use it. And obviously all of those are important things to consider. But my suggestion isn't that you should follow some abstract moral teaching because some ideology says that this is the right way, and the only right way. My point is that it may even be in our very own interest to choose a solution that is inferior in terms of current functionality/price/speed/whatever because there are long-term costs attached to the superior solution that actually make it more expensive, all things considered, than using the inferior solution now. So, arguably, the currently technically inferior option with a lower total cost would actually the better solution. To maybe make it more practical, but without any claim to being realistic, the numbers are obviously just made up: Let's assume that using Gmail saves you 10 minutes every day vs. using Thunderbird. Now, Gmail is privately owned, so if everyone chose to use Gmail, they would effectively have the monopoly over email. At that point, they have every incentive to add proprietary functionality for the sole purpose of making interoperability difficult. Which could prevent a new competitor from entering the market what would invent a new email workflow that would save you a further 10 minutes every day. Now, does choosing Gmail actually save you time overall? And is Gmail the better product if using Thunderbird now would lead to you being able to save 20 minutes a days a few years down the road? This isn't about some sort of diversity for diversity's sake, this is about which of those options actually is in our very own long-term interest, and monopolies have a strong tendency to be very much not in the interest of the customer. So, really, if anything, I would suggest that there is a moral obligation to watch out for people/organizations accumulating too much power and to prevent them from obtaining it if the long-term damage that that concentration of power can do is worse than the short-term benefits obtained from using their offerings.
coaxial 8y ago
Have you tried mailcow? I find it strikes a pretty good balance between running your own mailserver while not getting overwhelmed with details. It runs in containers and provides a webserver, webmail, caldav, spam filter, updater... I have made an ansible role that will back up to a Borg repository every hour as well as restoring the latest backup upon installation if you need inspiration: https://galaxy.ansible.com/coaxial/mailcow/ https://galaxy.ansible.com/coaxial/mailcow/ If you use your own domain name, you can set mailcow to sync with your Gmail account so you have all your emails in mailcow and then pull the plug on Gmail without losing anything. I find it runs pretty well for me on a server with only 2gb of ram.
- cm2187 8y ago
  If you are on Windows, the equivalent is smartermail. For a fee it also supports ActiveSync, which simplifies client configuration and gives pseudo-push.
simias 8y ago
I'm my own sysadmin (for personal email, small HTTP server, an OpenVPN and a few other minor services for personal use) and while it did take me a non-negligible amount of time to get things running smoothly it now only requires a few minutes of attention every other week to apply security updates and make sure my backups are running smoothly. In exchange for that I have total control over my data and basically unlimited customization potential. I'm definitely not planning on stopping that. I do use Github regularly however, but it's because of the "social network" aspect. If you want to interact with many open source projects it has to be on github nowadays. The network effect is strong.
- bobmichael 8y ago
  I want to make that switch, but am rather intimidated by my inexperience in that domain. Are there any guides or tutorials you've used that you'd recommend?
  - simias 8y ago
    Not a single tutorial comes to mind but you generally find a wealth of resources and tutorials online about setting up anything you might need. Always start by setting up a strict firewall and then whitelist cautiously anything you need as you set up the rest. Don't bother with SELinux. Be very careful with your Postfix (or if you're masochistic, sendmail) config as it's rather (needlessly IMHO) intricate and it's easy to end up with a configuration that appears to work but is extremely broken. In particular if you end up configuring an open relay by mistake spammers are going to have a lot of fun with your server but you'll end up blacklisted everywhere. My "stack" is nginx for web, postfix + dovecot + spamassassin for email (+ roundcube when I wanted a webmail). Postfix was by far the trickiest to configure, although if you find a good tutorial online and can spare a couple of hours to understand how it all works it's not too bad.
    - neop1x 8y ago
      I have similar setup but use Exim instead of Postfix. And I am still glad I host my own services. Yes, it took time but it will work as I want it forever. Only lazy people prefer ready-made cloud services - yes, it's convenient - but it's more costly, you lose control over your data and they are constantly redesigning and reinventing something. You never know when they sell the business or increase prices, ban or limit you.

ttsda 8y ago

I got tired of managing all that software so I just moved to containers. The Docker Hub has pretty much all I need, and if it doesn't, it's much easier to get it working than spinning a new VM or trying to install it together with a bunch of other software and keep them all up to date.

matteeyah 8y ago

We package GitLab with Omnibus - it makes the installation experience a breeze. See https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/ https://docs.gitlab.com/omnibus/ for more info. We also offer a hosted service (GitLab.com), if that's more convenient.

koolba 8y ago

Eh? It’s literally three shell commands to install GitLab. One to add their GPG key, one to add the upstream repo, and one to apt-get install the package. I bet there’s a curl | bash script to do all three as “one step”. If you’re going to complain about something, at least pick something legit like managing backups or server uptime. The install itself couldn’t be simpler.

EpicEng 8y ago
>Eh? It’s literally three shell commands to install GitLab As if installing gitlab was the last step in setting up a highly available and disaster safe git server.
- yoavm 8y ago
  100% agreed. Maintaining a self hosted web service is a demanding task. It's not about updating to get some new features right when they're out - it's about security, and it's a real pain. The installation can get messed, so what? You're not using the tool yet. You can get a new VM. But when you're updating the machine the holds your code (heck, even GitLab.com had their issues with updates!), or the machine that holds your mail service - things get scary. Installation is not at all the issue.
  - coaxial 8y ago
    The approach in taking to self hosted services is that if it's down for an hour or even a couple of days it's fine since I'm the main user. For disaster recovery, I put everything in ansible playbooks and roles. The role also takes care of setting up hourly backups (with Borg) and will import the latest backup when setting up the service. Because backups are separate, I can delete the last couple of backups if they've been compromised. It's obviously not as resilient as using the centralized equivalent, but it feels like a decent trade off. Still iterating so discussions welcome.
    - dcbadacd 8y ago
      How beefy is your machine?

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

Have you tried Gitea [0]? It's incredibly easy to setup, and if you run it on Debian you can setup Unattended Upgrades [1] once then you pretty much never have to worry about it again. [0] https://docs.gitea.io/en-US/ https://docs.gitea.io/en-US/ [1] https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades

Moru 8y ago

Decentralized doesn't mean you have to host everything yourself, there are many other companies to pay to host things outside your server. You don't want everything hanging centralized on your hardware anyway, if your server dies, everything is down.

neop1x 8y ago
That's true, except it is not common for a server to "die" every second day. It is not a problem to have uptimes in years. But due to updates it is reasonable to have a few minute downtime every few months. If you require 100% high availability (which only handful of people and companies really need) then you can set up a cluser on Kubernetes/Docker.