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Part of the fun for me is the tinkering, and I'm not sure if non-techies "get" the benefit of running a home server. Maybe the tide is turning for the younger g

Part of the fun for me is the tinkering, and I'm not sure if non-techies "get" the benefit of running a home server. Maybe the tide is turning for the younger generation? I can only speak for most people my age (30-40), they are capable of interacting with technology but they have absolutely 0 understanding of how anything actually works. "Why when I can just use Spotify/Netflix/iCloud/etc"? Is the answer I got when telling them about my own home server shiz

asim 4y ago
I think it's like most home devices, it comes down to ownership. We've gotten into the habit of streaming everything from someone else e.g we're in cloud rental economy, but there's opportunity to restore ownership. Maybe there's a generation that just wants to rent but it wasn't really by choice, it's because ownership cost too much, ownership of homes, servers, storage, etc. We can reduce these costs and we can make ownership of services a thing once more. Sure, you might need someone else to fix things when they break, but it's not like I'm doing my own plumbing or electrical work in my house either. So it's really this idea of pulling all your services back into your home server. Something you own, something that then becomes private by proxy of that. Something primarily for you and your family, no one else.
- cm2187 4y ago
  On the other hand one of the benefit of renting is that you don't have to deal with all the maintenance. It's fine to do a little maintenance but if you do that for everything it just absorbs all your time.
Dalewyn 4y ago
I know of an avid ham, and one of his favorite jokes is "Why use the radio when I can just call them on my cellphone?". At some point, stuff like home servers really are more about the tinkering rather than any practical desire or need. If someone's only interested in getting from Point A to Point B, he's just not going to care how fancy or interesting the mode of transport is.
cm2187 4y ago
I love tinkering but not with my data. For my data storage I want a stable and tested solution. I have done enough "shit I destroyed my RAID array" for my taste.
- guntherhermann 4y ago
  For important documents (insurance docs, mortgage, etc) I use SyncThing, for media I use my RAID1 array. I'd certainly hope that RAID1 works as I expect it to if one of my HDDs shit the bed! It's a good point though, backups aren't really backups unless they're tested... brb...
  - cm2187 4y ago
    And RAID1 isn't a backup. If you delete a file accidently, it doesn't help you.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      I have snapshots on my NAS, so nothing is really deleted. I supposed in another 10 years I'll have to start pruning old files, but disks are cheap and I don't really have that much data. For that matter I generally don't delete anything. If I save it to my computer odds are it is something I want to keep for the rest of my life (that is family pictures). There are a few distro images that I download once in a while and then delete, but for the most part disk is cheap, and I don't have time to delete old stuff.
      - dsr_ 4y ago
        RAID and snapshots aren't a backup either: lightning strikes/house fires/earthquakes/floods kill all the disks together. A backup is a restorable copy in some location not sharing much fate with the primary location. Right now you might consider "all copies in one city" to have too much fate in common, but "all copies in one country" to be acceptable, or "all copies on Earth".
        4y ago

asim 4y ago

I think it's like most home devices, it comes down to ownership. We've gotten into the habit of streaming everything from someone else e.g we're in cloud rental economy, but there's opportunity to restore ownership. Maybe there's a generation that just wants to rent but it wasn't really by choice, it's because ownership cost too much, ownership of homes, servers, storage, etc. We can reduce these costs and we can make ownership of services a thing once more. Sure, you might need someone else to fix things when they break, but it's not like I'm doing my own plumbing or electrical work in my house either. So it's really this idea of pulling all your services back into your home server. Something you own, something that then becomes private by proxy of that. Something primarily for you and your family, no one else.

cm2187 4y ago
On the other hand one of the benefit of renting is that you don't have to deal with all the maintenance. It's fine to do a little maintenance but if you do that for everything it just absorbs all your time.

Dalewyn 4y ago

I know of an avid ham, and one of his favorite jokes is "Why use the radio when I can just call them on my cellphone?". At some point, stuff like home servers really are more about the tinkering rather than any practical desire or need. If someone's only interested in getting from Point A to Point B, he's just not going to care how fancy or interesting the mode of transport is.

cm2187 4y ago

I love tinkering but not with my data. For my data storage I want a stable and tested solution. I have done enough "shit I destroyed my RAID array" for my taste.

guntherhermann 4y ago
For important documents (insurance docs, mortgage, etc) I use SyncThing, for media I use my RAID1 array. I'd certainly hope that RAID1 works as I expect it to if one of my HDDs shit the bed! It's a good point though, backups aren't really backups unless they're tested... brb...
- cm2187 4y ago
  And RAID1 isn't a backup. If you delete a file accidently, it doesn't help you.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    I have snapshots on my NAS, so nothing is really deleted. I supposed in another 10 years I'll have to start pruning old files, but disks are cheap and I don't really have that much data. For that matter I generally don't delete anything. If I save it to my computer odds are it is something I want to keep for the rest of my life (that is family pictures). There are a few distro images that I download once in a while and then delete, but for the most part disk is cheap, and I don't have time to delete old stuff.
    - dsr_ 4y ago
      RAID and snapshots aren't a backup either: lightning strikes/house fires/earthquakes/floods kill all the disks together. A backup is a restorable copy in some location not sharing much fate with the primary location. Right now you might consider "all copies in one city" to have too much fate in common, but "all copies in one country" to be acceptable, or "all copies on Earth".
      - 4y ago