Selfhosted

Thank you for the thorough response. After looking carefully at what you wrote I didn't really see a difference between the term self-hosting and home network.

You said you have software that automatically downloads media. The way I see this using movies for instance, if I own the movies and have them on my machine, then I can stream them over my network and have full control. Whereas if I "own" them on Amazon and steam it from there, they can track the viewing experience, push ads, or even remove the content completely. I understand that.. But if I want a NEW movie, I'm back to Amazon to get it in the first place (or Netflix, or Walmart, etc. I get it). I'm fact, personally I've started actually buying disks of the movies/music I like most so that it can't really be taken away and I can enjoy it even without an Internet connection. Am I missing something? Unless of course the media you are downloading is pirated.

I know I'm asking what seems to be a huge question but I'm really only asking for a broad description, sort of an ELI5 thing.

A program isn't just a program: in order to work properly, the context in which it runs — system libraries, configuration files, other programs it might need to help it such as databases or web servers, etc. — needs to be correct. Getting that stuff figured out well enough that end users can easily get it working on random different Linux distributions with arbitrary other software installed is hard, so developers eventually resorted to getting it working on their one (virtual) machine and then just (virtually) shipping that whole machine.

Please don't call yourself stupid. The common internet slang for that is ELI5 or "explain [it] like I'm 5 [years old]".

I'll also try to explain it:

Docker is a way to run a program on your machine, but in a way that the developer of the program can control.
It's called containerization and the developer can make a package (or container) with an operating system and all the software they need and ship that directly to you.

You then need the software docker (or podman, etc.) to run this container.

Another advantage of containerization is that all changes stay inside the container except for directories you explicitly want to add to the container (called volumes).
This way the software can't destroy your system and you can't accidentally destroy the software inside the container.

It’s a container service. Containers are similar to virtual machines but less separate from the host system. Docker excels in creating reproducible self contained environments for your applications. It’s not the simplest solution out there but once you understand the basics it is a very powerful tool for system reliability.

Docker enables you to create instances of an operating system running within a “container” which doesn’t access the host computer unless it is explicitly requested. This is done using a Dockerfile, which is a file that describes in detail all of the settings and parameters for said instance of the operating system. This might be packages to install ahead of time, or commands to create users, compile code, execute code, and more.

This instance of an operating system, usually a “server,” is great because you can throw the server away at any time and rebuild it with practically zero effort. It will be just like new. There are many reasons to want to do that; who doesn’t love a fresh install with the bare necessities?

On the surface (and the rabbit hole is deep!), Docker enables you to create an easily repeated formula for building a server so that you don’t get emotionally attached to a server.

EDIT: Wow! thanks for all the detailed and super quick replies! I've been reading all the comments here and am concluding that (even though I am currently running only one service) it might be interesting to start using Docker to run all (future) services seperately on the server!

This is pretty much what I've started doing. Containers have the wonderful benefit that if you don't like it, you just delete it. If you install on bare metal (at least in Linux) you can end up with a lot of extra packages getting installed and configured that could affect your system in the future. With containers, all those specific extras are bundled together and removed at the same time without having any effect on your base system, so you're always at your clean OS install.

I will also add an irritation with docker containers as well, if you create something in a container that isn't kept in a shared volume, it gets destroyed when starting the container again. The container you use keeps the maintainers setup, for instance I do occasional encoding of videos in a handbrake container, I can't save any profiles I make within that container because it will get wiped next time I restart the container since it's part of the container, not on any shared volume.

I don't think I really understood docker until I watched this video which takes you through building up a docker-like container system from scratch. It's very understandable and easy to follow if you have a basic understanding of Linux operating systems. I recommend it to anyone I know working with docker:

https://youtu.be/8fi7uSYlOdc

Alternative Invidious link: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8fi7uSYlOdc

Learn Docker even if you have a single app. I do the same with a Minecraft server.

• No dependency issues
• All configuration (storage/network/application management) can be done via a single file (compose file)
• Easy roll-backs possible
• Maintain multiple versions of the app while keeping them separate
• Recreate the server on a different server/machine using only the single configuration file
• Config is standardized so easy to read

You will save a huge amount of time managing your app.

PS: I would like to give a shout out to podman as the rootless version of Docker

This thread:

Jails make docker look like windows 11 with copilot.

Containerized software. The main advantage of this is that every application, or stack of applications, runs in its own ecosystem. You can restart a container whenever without having to reboot your entire system. You can store all data off a container in a volume, so if you hit a snag, you can recreate the container without actually losing any of your configs.

You can also create networks so that apps run in different subnets than other apps.

Very simply put, a docker container is like a mini system that runs on your main system.

Something else I like about docker is docker compose. You can create a container or stack of containers with a single simple YAML file without actually having to install anything yourself. I manage my containers in Portainer.

Pretty good intro for absolute beginners here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg19Z8LL06w

Docker is a set of tools, that make it easier to work with some features of the Linux kernel. These kernel features allow several degrees of separating different processes from each other. For example, by default each Docker container you run will see its own file system, unable to interact (read: mess) with the original file system on the host or other Docker container. Each Docker container is in the end a single executable with all its dependencies bundled in an archive file, plus some Docker-related metadata.

I've never posted on Lemmy before. I tried to ask this question of the greater community but I had to pick a community and didn't know which one. This shows up as lemmy.world but that wasn't an option.

Anyway, what I wanted to know is why do people self host? What is the advantage/cost. Sorry if I'm hijacking. Maybe someone could just post a link or something.

..baby don't hurt me.. No more..

I'm not sure how familiar you are with computers in general, but I think the best way to explain Docker is to explain the problem it's looking to solve. I'll try and keep it simple.

Imagine you have a computer program. It could be any program; the details aren't important. What is important, though, is that the program runs perfectly fine on your computer, but constantly errors or crashes on your friend's computer.

Reproducibility is really important in computing, especially if you're the one actually programming the software. You have to be certain that your software is stable enough for other people to run without issues.

Docker helps massively simplify this dilemma by running the program inside a 'container', which is basically a way to run the same exact program, with the same exact operating system and 'system components' installed (if you're more tech savvy, this would be packages, libraries, dependencies, etc.), so that your program will be able to run on (best-case scenario) as many different computers as possible. You wouldn't have to worry about if your friend forgot to install some specific system component to get the program running, because Docker handles it for you. There is nuance here of course, like CPU architecture, but for the most part, Docker solves this 'reproducibility' problem.

Docker is also nice when it comes to simply compiling the software in addition to running it. You might have a program that requires 30 different steps to compile, and messing up even one step means that the program won't compile. And then you'd run into the same exact problem where it compiles on your machine, but not your friend's. Docker can also help solve this problem. Not only can it dumb down a 30-step process into 1 or 2 commands for your friend to run, but it makes compiling the code much less prone to failure. This is usually what the Dockerfile accomplishes, if you ever happen to see those out in the wild in all sorts of software.

Also, since Docker puts things in 'containers', it also limits what resources that program can access on your machine (but this can be very useful). You can set it so that all the files it creates are saved inside the container and don't affect your 'host' computer. Or maybe you only want to give permission to a few very specific files. Maybe you want to do something like share your computer's timezone with a Docker container, or prevent your Docker containers from being directly exposed to the internet.

There's plenty of other things that make Docker useful, but I'd say those are the most important ones--reproducibility, ease of setup, containerization, and configurable permissions.

One last thing--Docker is comparable to something like a virtual machine, but the reason why you'd want to use Docker over a virtual machine is much less resource overhead. A VM might require you to allocate gigabytes of memory, multiple CPU cores, even a GPU, but Docker is designed to be much more lightweight in comparison.

A little box you can put your app.

If the app does bad, it doesn't sink your ship. Just throw the box over board and repackage the app.

I'm not sure most people need it, but it could be fun to use a new app inside a container. Also makes updating that needs a restarting without shutting down your other services.

If 'but it works on my computer' was a software service