I’ve seen a lot of people saying things that amount to “those tech nerds need to understand that nobody wants to use the command line!”, but I don’t actually think that’s the hardest part of self-hosting today. I mean, even with a really slick GUI like ASUSTOR NASes provide, getting a reliable, non-NATed connection, with an SSL certificate, some kind of basic DDOS protection, backups, and working outgoing email (ugh), is a huge pain in the ass.

Am I wrong? Would a Sandstorm-like GUI for deploying Docker images solve all of our problems? What can we do to reshape the network such that people can more easily run their own stuff?

  • Technology is complicated. Period. Anything that “seems” simple is in reality extremely complicated underneath the hood. A GUI is nice as long as it works. But if for some reason it doesn’t, you’re shit out of luck.