I was wondering about the pros and cons about self hosting your services via Yunohost. I currently have all my services hosted in docker containers on a Debian homeserver. As I was planning on a fresh install, setting up an Ansible script to simplify backup & restoring and bake in a centralized user management system (currently I annoyingly have separate passwords for each service for my 5 users).
Now I was wondering if I could get some experience reports from Yunohost users. What are the problems you faced? Are you satisfied? Are there so many services you couldn’t find that you rather went the selfhosted way and integrate Authelia or a similar service? Any ideas and feedback is welcome that can help make up my mind.
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It’s a mature, well-maintained system and has a solid catalogue of well-maintained apps. I run Nextcloud, Navidrome, Calibre Web, a Matrix Server and Element (on different I.P.s), Wallabag, a Firefox sync server and a Collabora office suite (REALLY useful) on a ThinkCentre Tiny that I got from EBay for just over £100 (storage extra!) It’s been running pretty seamlessly for over a year and I feel confident tinkering, doing routine things through the UI and getting a bit deeper with the CLI.
On the support, I’ve used a lot of FOSS support forums and I think YNH’s is one of the best. They are not as polite or friendly as Nextcloud’s and they will ignore irrelevant, snarky or duplicate questions, but if you have a genuine enquiry, they will hold your hand through a problem. I think they use a triage system and take shifts covering it. The XMPP chat, duplicated on Element, is also very helpful.
Personally, I have a fondness for Yunohost, in the same way I have a fondness for Debian and for Nextcloud. It is a well-organised group effort which requires some commitment and knowledge from users but not too much. It needs some attention but gives back more value than a user has to.put in. If I could learn all the ins-and-outs of network security, I might try a Docker set-up, just for boast-value, but with Yunohost I don’t have to.
I recommend Hendrick’s comment in this discussion.
I tried Yunohost once, and everything worked as long as I stuck to the officially supported apps. The community forum was supportive within reason, and would respond with advice fairly quickly. When I reported an error with an unofficial app, however, I was instantly told off that I shouldn’t expect any help.
Now, having used and admined my Linux desktop systems for a decade (without claiming to be an actual sysadmin), I nosed around the system a bit and to my eyes it seemed a right mess of app and user folders, permissions and containers. Surely, a combination of my limited understanding of server apps and a system that is made primarily for GUI use to make administration easier for beginners.
What I mean to say is, if you already run a set of working docker containers, you’re probably more advanced than the intended Yunohost user. I was that half ounce more literate that I became frustrated with the GUI-centric setup, and imperial pounds too illiterate to actually muck around in the command line.
Look at it this way, Yunohost offers a fraction of the apps available on Docker, and not all of them are maintained. They do offer a graphic admin interface and out-of-the-box working setups (or did five years ago when I tried it).
When I reported an error with an unofficial app, however, I was instantly told off that I shouldn’t expect any help.<
So, you’re complaining about a lack of support for an unsupported app? They are actually called ‘unsupported’. That’s quite a clue.
Also, the catalogue of supported apps is pretty huge now, thanks to a large and enthusiastic community.
To me it didn’t sound like complaining, just sharing that experience.
Yeah, that’s the kind of unhelpful condescension I recognise from that “enthusiastic” community. Thanks for the nitpick.
