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Comment by cozicoolmail | Hacker News Reader

Even if these things were dead simple, I cannot see any of my non-technical friends using products like these. It is simply prohibitively complicated compared to dropbox - that "just works". I even recall a comment on here when Dropbox launched saying something like "why not configure an FTP server to do this". This is that FTP server.

Also, personally, I would never host any content on-prem at my home. It is far too easy for my internet to go down, and I'd rather my personal website be under somebody else's control (say, an S3 bucket) than get physical hardware to the server hosting the bits.

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Dead on. And the comment you referenced is one of my favorite all-time HN comments…

"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem."

This is a perfect example of when tech-minded people get blinded to how complicated some things are for the masses.

"For a Linux user"

No, if you're capable of doing all that, you're a Linux sysadmin, not a user. Too many tech folk blur those lines, but there's a huge difference (and yes, I know the dropbox comment has been beaten to death over the years - I just never got my 2 cents in before!)

I'm guessing the overlap between linux sysadmins and linux users is much larger (not counting phones etc) than the overlap between windows sysadmins and windows users, though :)

I am a Linux user and I am struggling to set up a home network between 3 computers. Okay, I am a part time Linux user, I have to use Windows for work. Havings said that I do work in IT so am definitely not an end user. My Samba installation somehow didn't work, VNC also didn't work and eventually I just used SSH. One of these days I am going to have to sit down with my router manual and set static IP address for machine as I use as the "server". I solve enough problems at work and I just don't feel like learning Samba to set up my home network. If I feel like this I can imagine how the "normal" user feels.

I am technical and I struggle to find a use for my home server. The most common uses I always find are:

- Media server: I primarily use streaming services or physical media

- File sharing: I rarely ever share files between computers, and if I need to, I just scp them on my home network.

- Web hosting: box is too small/old to reliably do this, plus I have cloud hosting already

I do use it for private SVN and have plans to set up a VPN server, but other than that, it feels like unless I cast off every existing service I have, it wouldn't be worth it.

Although, casting off every existing service is enticing in an idealistic sort of way...

I think the key would be to embed it to some existing appliance; like a router, game console, or other "always-on" and connected device.

I don't see the home server being the prime selling point. Everyone needs a router, so if you created a router that was dead simple to configure and use, had some cool extra features, integrated well with your home gadgets ("Alexa, turn off the WiFi", "Alexa, setup a guest wifi network for the next 8 hours") and on top of this acted like a home server, people would buy it.

At least from a consumer product perspective.

The router I got from my ISP already has quite some stuff built in. For example, I can enable DynDNS, plug in a drive via USB providing a SMB network drive, and enable a secondary guest WiFi.

I agree that the killer feature is still missing. That could maybe be storage-management (NAS) or HTPC (Kodi). People seem to buy such devices.

On the other hand there are nice features already: VPN Server, Seedbox, Ad-blocking-proxy

I have a home box that I access with x2go. I can browse the internet, download stuff, or do whatever I want without touching the office network. I can disconnect a session and reconnect from a different pc.

I also have my server configured to route out via a vpn.

Looking for a way to do better remote access to Linux boxes - Microsoft's RDP completely nails it on Windows, I used to quite like NX, but don't hear much about it these days, how do you find x2go, particularly from a server configuration perspective?

X2go is super easy to use, pretty much install and go. You need a client, I've used the linux and windows client. Both work well. I think you can make their python client work without windows admin rights, but it's been awhile since I tried that.

I browse websites with it, and unless it's very image heavy, it's as smooth as a local browser. If you have large images, scrolling can get choppy. Same with videos, they can be choppy.

I've set up a homeserver for more than a year now. The only real use is being my always running SyncThing instance.

I run a nonprofit that teaches people how to code and for the past year we have hosted our own server / content at our offices. our students ssh into our server to write code and host their apps / content from there. Sometimes, Ive noticed that even though it feels like internet is down, upload still works and students can still ssh into our server remotely. In the past year we haven't had any issues at all, except for the time we accidentally tripped the power cord. Hosting your own content might be alot more reliable than you think :)

One of the things I've noticed with on-prem equipment at work, is that when the Internet has gone down in the past, most people don't actually... notice. The scenario is obviously very different than a home user, because multiple users can still communicate amongst the organization with outside Internet down, but there's huge benefits to being on-prem that have gotten disregarded or forgotten about.

A consumer-grade UPS on my home PC and network equipment has reliably kept my home setup reliably up and connected for all except for ISP outages.

I think this is for people who don't want to share their data with Dropbox, or don't want to pay for Dropbox. There is a tradeoff (simplicity), and the idea is to reduce that tradeoff by making it simpler.

The question is not would your most non-technical friend adopt this, but would the marginally non-technical friend adopt this.

I would do it if it were easy "enough."

How often does your internet go down?

I have been hosting a Nextcloud instance with a FreeNAS backend (for ZFS). If anything, that has been far more convenient then Dropbox ever was (better bandwidth at home, as much space as I want), and I control my data. I think there has been one instance in the past two years where I actually had an interruption to my internet.

>Even if these things were dead simple, I cannot see any of my non-technical friends using products like these. It is simply prohibitively complicated compared to dropbox - that "just works". I even recall a comment on here when Dropbox launched saying something like "why not configure an FTP server to do this". This is that FTP server.

This is the problem with every attempt at decentralized, federated social media as well IMO. To be sure, the privacy concerns of a centralized service will never really go away. But the benefits of centralization on the web are massive from a UX standpoint. This seems like a solvable problem. It seems to me like it shouldn't be too hard for a company to be verifiably private in their handling of your data.

The only way you will get verifiability of handling of private data is for homomorphic encryption to finally have an efficient open implementation.

Doesn't the rise of containers and cloud companies which will host and run them make this easier? if not now, later on? companies like Digital Ocean are pretty close to the one click upload container and run it model.

i.e you have companies which will securely and redundantly host a (encrypted?) container, which gets backed up and so on, and runs the freedombox of your choice.

So you have control/freedom/ponies and the cloud compute becomes just plumbing.

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