Hi all, I’ve been noticing a pattern in self-hosting communities, and I’m curious if others see it too.
Whenever someone asks for a more beginner-friendly solution, something with a UI, automated setup, or fewer manual configs, there’s often a response like:
“If you can’t configure Docker, reverse proxies, and Yaml files, you shouldn’t be self-hosting.”
Sometimes it feels like a portion of the community views complexity as a badge of honour. Don’t get me wrong, I love the technical side of self-hosting. I enjoy tinkering, breaking things, fixing them, learning along the way. That’s how most of us got into it.
But here’s the question: Is gatekeeping slowing down the adoption of self-hosting?
If we want more people to own their data, escape Big Tech, and embrace open-source alternatives, shouldn’t we welcome solutions that lower the entry barrier?
There’s room for everyone:
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people who want full control and custom setups,
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people who want semi-manual but guided,
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and people who want it to work with minimal friction.
Just like not every Linux user compiles from source, but they’re still Linux users.
Where do you stand? Should self-hosting stay DIY-only or is there value in easier, more accessible ways to self-host?
My project focuses on building a tool that makes self-hosting more accessible without sacrificing data ownership, so I genuinely want your honest take before releasing it more widely.
Everyone’s wrong here. New users should try to look up some basics, and existing advanced users should tolerate beginner difficulties and not say anything if they can’t support and welcome the beginners. It would be perfectly acceptable to have a self hosted noobs community so advanced users are isolated from noobs if they want to be.
Frankly, this has been a longstanding barrier for me in adopting Linux and self hosting. Communities can be really unhelpful. It’s not like hobbyists are starting with reading an organised textbook. Knowledge is picked up piecemeal and sometimes there are glaring holes in beginner knowledge. For Linux adoption and self hosting, AI has helped me a hell of a lot. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without AI. In my mind, this is a perfect use for AI. I can ask my dumb beginner questions without annoying AI, and it’s a very low risk situation for when AI gets things completely wrong and it doesnt really matter much. Also I find it amusing that I used the big tech company’s tools to move to platforms that deny big tech companies from exploiting my data, which is now safely local.
Isn’t this something Linus Media Group is focusing on by investing in HexOS…lower the barrier for entry. I see no sense in turning away people who are interested in privacy and security. Communities should really have a “gates open, come on in” attitude.
Yeah, I totally get it. I’ve run into the same thing plenty of times. Experienced self hosting folks aren’t always the most helpful. AI can give beginners a hand, but you still need to know what you’re asking it to do and double check its answers, since it can make stuff up.
As for the advanced users not always being supportive…not sure that’s something you can change easily. But I do think there’s a lot of potential in a tool or resource that helps beginners step into self hosting safely, get the basics down, and have something solid to build on later.
Eh, the issue with using AI with something like a self-hosted setup is that it lacks nuance and is most likely sourced from all the stack overflow answers without including, again, any context that might be involved.
This leads to situations where it “works,” but potentially in a way with glaring issues that you would otherwise get from this community.
That said, I understand that “advanced” users here can be uptight about things that they believe to be a foregone conclusion, which is where the whole “learning” aspect is what we all need: both learning to self-host “better” and learning to help others.
A lot of things I’ve done may well be very poor practice. But at least I’ve got this thing off the ground and am learning from there. If I couldn’t make a start then I wouldn’t go down this rabbit hole at all in the first place. Without trying, implementing, breaking and making mistakes…it’s not like I would have browsed Stack Overflow for months. I have no programming or PC qualifications. Self teaching ain’t easy. AI did a lot more heavy lifting initially. Now it mostly double checks my YAML draft and makes sense of error logs so I can be pointed in the right direct to know where to even start reading.
Fair enough! My own experience has so far been less helpful, due to it hallucinating config based on what I’m asking and if my use case is possible, which made me turn more to perusing docs and source code 🙃