Futo (Louis Rossman) at it again with great content, this time a Guide to a Self Managed life. This 14hrs long guide comes in two video parts, aswell as a written guide for those who prefer. Both video and written quide comes with complete chapters and timestamps. This should be a great starting point for those who have the time and want to start learning from the very beginning.
Video Link to Part 1: Youtube - Invidious
Video Link to Part 2: Youtube - Invidious
Happy selfhosting in 2025 everyone ✨
The fact that he completely ignores docker because he doesn’t know it and urges users to build a router with pfsense make the video a miss for me
He doesn’t look like someone who doesn’t know docker, there is a whole section on that wiki page where he describes what docker is and how it works in details.
He just decided to not dockerize his installation because:
- he thinks VM in his case are more practical.
- docker didn’t even exist when he started to go self-hosting.
It’s funny because I view LXC’s the same. They’re more practical than both VMs and dockers to me. Outside of community-scripts though, it seems most people don’t like LXC’s nearly as much as I do…
The issue with LXC is that it doesn’t set the software up for you. You’re pretty much in the same situation as a VM or bare metal, you have to figure out how to install it or use scripts/Ansible to do it. A docker is a distribution method for the software, not the operating system. I know there’s things that you can do to ship a configured LXC, but that’s never gained traction.
So docker is far and away the easiest choice for developers looking to get their software used in a predictable manner.
The fact that you’re already aware of what Docker is means that this video and wiki were already a “miss” for you.
This guide is heavily opinionated and simply outdated. 2 examples:
- use of openvpn. Wireguard is by design way more secure (use of keys instead of passwords) and is way more performant.
- use of pfSense. Yes pfSense is ok but the company behind it has shown it hostility towards open source and foss multiple times. Why should a beginner use PFsense when OPNsense exists. OPNsense is not even mentioned.
And that are only 2 points i discovered while scrolling through. Louis is a great guy but as it looks like he should leave that topic to other people.
Also, you must have not read the wiki properly, because he does mention OPNsense.
This is correct, i missed that part. pfSense is mentioned 259 vs. OPNsense 3 times. But only the “not nice part” is mentioned and not the hostility towards FOSS. Here are some examples https://github.com/rapi3/pfsense-is-closed-source
I have not vetted every single claim but just alone that fact that they have this closed source model is enough for not using it. OPNsense is to my knowledge fully open source.
I completely agree that WireGuard and OPNsense are excellent choices, and I would have chosen them myself. However, I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that someone should “leave the topic to others” simply because they’ve made different choices. While WireGuard is indeed superior, OpenVPN is still a solid option and widely used today. Similarly, although OPNsense is better, pfSense remains a great piece of software - even though the company behind it isnt perfect.
People should still be able to use whatever software they like without being juged by it. Its better for people to at least start with something, rather than nothing: then its also more likely they will get more educated on topic and the different matters of opinions later on.
OpenVPN is still a solid option and widely used today.
Absolutely, but Wireguard is simpler to setup and comes by default and by design with a more secure default config.
- Create keys on host and on clients
- Generate a config
- You now have a secure VPN Setup.
Now look at all those options you need to tune on OpenVPN.
even though the company behind it isnt perfect.
But then why recommending pfSense? OPNsense is the same with a much more FOSS friendly company behind it. Yes pfSense is at the moment ok but no reason to use it over OPNsense imho.
People should still be able to use whatever software they like without being juged by it.
Yes. And i never judged anyone running thr software, only ppl who recommend it.
Its better for people to at least start with something, rather than nothing
I am not sure about it. Personally, when i get into a new topic i like to have comparisons. They show me what is actually relevant and what i should look out for. But maybe it is just me.
I said multiple times “recommend” here, but that is actually my main problem, i would be much more ok when he simply said there is x and y also available but i use z because of 123…
heavily opinionated
Is that of itself not an opinion…?
outdated
Tbf I haven’t looked at the source material but I don’t think two points make it “outdated”. It’s like calling Debian outdated.
Is that of itself not an opinion…?
Nope. It is objectively opinionated, since he only shows his solution and offers or shows no other solution.
Tbf I haven’t looked at the source material but I don’t think two points make it “outdated”. It’s like calling Debian outdated.
Debian is not outdated, also is the technology not outdated he used in the guide (as far as i can tell since i have not read through everything). But using those to get to the shown solution is outdated. When someone in this community asks for a VPN solution most ppl will recommend Wireguard and or tailscale and not OpenVPN.
OpenVPN has other benefits like better user management and more customizability but for this use case it is not the fit, since other solutions are easier to setup and harder to fuck up the security part for a beginner.
Edit: Those are only the 2 examples i picked. I have not looked through everything, but those 2 stood out to me by just looking at the ToC.
I agree with a lot of LR’s opinions, especially around right to repair, but he has always been extremely long winded, and guilty of repeating himself a lot in his videos. Not to mention opinionated.
While it’s cool that some people are excited for this and will no doubt learn a ton from this, there is no way I would recommend this to anyone.
Is there an alternative comprehensive guide you would recommend? I’ve been wanting to get into self hosting for ages and I’ve wanted something like this to help me through the process. A lot of the criticism in this thread means absolutely nothing to me because I have no idea what any of it means
I don’t know if I would recommend a comprehensive guide at all tbh. It’s like recommending a comprehensive guide to gardening or reading or something. Just start small with realistic goals and find some good YouTube videos that pique your interest.
I started with unraid (strictly due to the expandability of the array, and I’m still glad I did that) and found SpaceInvader One’s videos to be super helpful, and he continues to put out new videos with new ways of harnessing unraid’s power. After a while I got the hang of it and now I feel comfortable reading the docs of a service and installing it myself and integrating it into my stack. Following communities like these on Lemmy, as well as perusing the Community App Store in unraid is more than enough to expose me to interesting software I want to try out.
I say sit back and enjoy the process. We have a tendency to put pressure on ourselves to do things perfectly and immediately. But tend not to enjoy the learning process. Thinking back five years ago it’s amazing how far my server has come, let alone my ability to control it. Enjoy it!
Why in recent years do YouTubers think insanely long videos equal good content? 14 hours is completely unnecessary. Also, not a big fan of him constantly saying in videos he’s not good and doesn’t know why people listen to him yap… much prefer raidowl or hardware haven
You underestimate how much knowledge it actually takes to do selfhosting stuff. To truly explain things. This stuff is clearly aimed at really low prerequisite knowledge people. It’s only with pre-req knowledge that you can skip out on a lot of content. This is the exact same complaint I got when I was teaching certain 100 level courses at a major university… 135 hours of coursework just to get students to a baseline competence on a number of introductory topics for IT… 14 hours for basic self-hosting knowledge is likely not enough to actually be sufficient either (which is likely why they specifically hamstring the options and go straight for using just one specific software)… But it takes time to explain all the items that goes into everything you need to know for self-hosting.
So why are the videos not self hosted?
Because YouTube pays Louis Rossmann, compared to selfhosting video which costs tremendous amounts of money through bandwidth.
Most of the views would be still in YouTube anyway, and those tremendous amounts are not that big because with PeerTube you share the bandwidth with other instances and even other clients (source: I’m running my own instance).
those tremendous amounts are not that big because with PeerTube you share the bandwidth with other instances
I have 8gbps, I’m perfectly willing to federate with Futo’s instance and take some of (if not all of) the load for this video. But I don’t think they peer with that many other people. At 15mbps that’s about 500 people watching simultaneously.
I agree I’d like to see it on peertube for sure.
Probably because in the current state it would not reach many people. I like PeerTube as much a the next guy but FUTO has to keep things a bit pragmatic too I imagine.
video for beginners
“why is this not available for my niche viewer? smh those beginners need to do some research on their own and hopefully find the same niche instance that I use so they can start calling themselves beginners. They are, uh… beta beginners? alpha? nightly beginners! posers!”
Viewership 101: go where your audience is.
