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I love this idea. Personally, I would love to self-host, but don't due to not being technical enough to use a command line. I am from a non-technical backgroun

by PLG88 2y ago

I love this idea. Personally, I would love to self-host, but don't due to not being technical enough to use a command line. I am from a non-technical background but learnt loads of technical stuff over the years, to the extent that I can describe many complex topics, present, or write stuff for technical people. But my non-computer science background means I am not familiar with the command line. I have used it and understand, but have not 'learnt its language'. Does any 'turnkey' self-hosting solution exists which provides an abstraction, so that I can just deal with GUIs and not command line to start (and learn on the way)?? In fact, that would be a great way to learn.

nakkaya 2y ago
Yes there are. I would suggest going through the subreddit mentioned /r/selfhosted. There are GUI tools and NAS products that would let you host docker images. As for CLI ask an LLM, for simple common commands you are going to be dealing with they are pretty good at it.
gsck 2y ago
Definitely worth just sitting down and learning how the command line works. Its not as scary as it looks. No need to have any fancy comp-sci background, hell I have an arts degree!
pxc 2y ago
> and learn on the way In case you're interested in resources for this: I think _Learn Enough Developer Tools to Be Dangerous_ is a great start. I've been guiding my roommate through it as he studies, a chapter a week. If you do pick it up, just skim the chapters on editors— their examples are overly specific to a choice of editor of few outstanding strengths, and if you prefer a different editor you may struggle to find equivalents for some of the hokey examples the book uses. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learn-enough-developer/9780137843404/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learn-enough-developer/... Special editions/compilations of Linux magazines can also be a very good source of high-quality tutorials, including for CLI stuff. These are nice because while they include general introductions, they're mostly comprised of bite-sized tutorials that you can pick and choose according to your interest. I also like them because they're available in print, colorful, and shiny, and thoughtfully laid out, plus there are no ads— very pleasant compared to the web in many ways. Linux Pro Magazine did one on shell topics this year, back in February: https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions/50-Linux-Shell-Handbook-2024-Edition https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions/... Such magazines also include step-by-step guides for setting up services that I was able to follow (with some trepidation!) when I was just a kid who was new to Linux and still honestly a bit scared of the command line. Linux Format is really good for this because it's targeted at desktop Linux and computer hobbyists broadly rather than rather than programmers or IT professionals. Their guides assume little to no familiarity with the command line, so they often include reminders of little bits of command line basics rather than just assuming you share that context with the authors: https://linuxformat.com/ https://linuxformat.com/ Besides web-based management interfaces for servers, like Proxmox, you might consider getting started by just running some services on a spare desktop computer. openSUSE has a long history of emphasizing GUI administration tools, so many relatively 'advanced' tasks for it do not require the command line, which is somewhat different from other distros. (If you give it a try, its GUI configurator, YaST2, will strike you at first glance as having a dated look. This is intentional— continuity is a priority for YaST, so GUI-based tutorials from many years ago will still be accurate.) It's also a distro with good guts and nice CLI tools, so you won't necessarily outgrow it after you get your feet wet with the command line.
77owen 2y ago
As far as turnkey solutions go coolify.io is the one I’ve seen floating around recently.
immibis 2y ago
Try setting up a server on Windows, then. Windows's native language is the GUI like Linux's is the command line. I remember there used to be lots of GUI Windows web servers - don't know if there still are. Of course you have Windows versions of Linux servers like Apache, which still use their configuration files and so on, but you can use the GUI for the rest of everything.
rakoo 2y ago
Yup, https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/ was built for that. You can manage your server entirely from the admin panel, installing pleroma or matrix or freshrss takes 3 clicks, and it can even manage your DNS zone for you. Mail and XMPP are included. When you're feeling confident, you can then fiddle with the command line and explore what's happening behind the scenes.
- PLG88 2y ago
  Wow, that looks super useful, thanks!

by PLG88 2y ago

nakkaya 2y ago

Yes there are. I would suggest going through the subreddit mentioned /r/selfhosted. There are GUI tools and NAS products that would let you host docker images. As for CLI ask an LLM, for simple common commands you are going to be dealing with they are pretty good at it.

gsck 2y ago

Definitely worth just sitting down and learning how the command line works. Its not as scary as it looks. No need to have any fancy comp-sci background, hell I have an arts degree!

pxc 2y ago

> and learn on the way In case you're interested in resources for this: I think _Learn Enough Developer Tools to Be Dangerous_ is a great start. I've been guiding my roommate through it as he studies, a chapter a week. If you do pick it up, just skim the chapters on editors— their examples are overly specific to a choice of editor of few outstanding strengths, and if you prefer a different editor you may struggle to find equivalents for some of the hokey examples the book uses. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learn-enough-developer/9780137843404/ https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learn-enough-developer/... Special editions/compilations of Linux magazines can also be a very good source of high-quality tutorials, including for CLI stuff. These are nice because while they include general introductions, they're mostly comprised of bite-sized tutorials that you can pick and choose according to your interest. I also like them because they're available in print, colorful, and shiny, and thoughtfully laid out, plus there are no ads— very pleasant compared to the web in many ways. Linux Pro Magazine did one on shell topics this year, back in February: https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions/50-Linux-Shell-Handbook-2024-Edition https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Resources/Special-Editions/... Such magazines also include step-by-step guides for setting up services that I was able to follow (with some trepidation!) when I was just a kid who was new to Linux and still honestly a bit scared of the command line. Linux Format is really good for this because it's targeted at desktop Linux and computer hobbyists broadly rather than rather than programmers or IT professionals. Their guides assume little to no familiarity with the command line, so they often include reminders of little bits of command line basics rather than just assuming you share that context with the authors: https://linuxformat.com/ https://linuxformat.com/ Besides web-based management interfaces for servers, like Proxmox, you might consider getting started by just running some services on a spare desktop computer. openSUSE has a long history of emphasizing GUI administration tools, so many relatively 'advanced' tasks for it do not require the command line, which is somewhat different from other distros. (If you give it a try, its GUI configurator, YaST2, will strike you at first glance as having a dated look. This is intentional— continuity is a priority for YaST, so GUI-based tutorials from many years ago will still be accurate.) It's also a distro with good guts and nice CLI tools, so you won't necessarily outgrow it after you get your feet wet with the command line.

77owen 2y ago

As far as turnkey solutions go coolify.io is the one I’ve seen floating around recently.

immibis 2y ago

Try setting up a server on Windows, then. Windows's native language is the GUI like Linux's is the command line. I remember there used to be lots of GUI Windows web servers - don't know if there still are. Of course you have Windows versions of Linux servers like Apache, which still use their configuration files and so on, but you can use the GUI for the rest of everything.

rakoo 2y ago

Yup, https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/ was built for that. You can manage your server entirely from the admin panel, installing pleroma or matrix or freshrss takes 3 clicks, and it can even manage your DNS zone for you. Mail and XMPP are included. When you're feeling confident, you can then fiddle with the command line and explore what's happening behind the scenes.

PLG88 2y ago
Wow, that looks super useful, thanks!