We’re talking about servers here. Linux is the market leader in server software by an absolutely enormous margin.

There’s a reason that’s not very popular outside of corporate intranets.

If you want to ride a bike, you need to learn to balance on a bike. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional cyclist.

If you want to self host, you need to learn some basic administration, and that includes the terminal. That will never change. You don’t need to be a professional server administrator.

You might be able to get by with some hand holdy solution that offers a few things you can do, but just like riding a scooter is much more limited than riding a bike, using a turnkey solution is much more limited than setting up your own server.

Imagine wanting to self host but refusing to learn how to forward a port. There are just some things you need to learn. Like I said in my original comment, the terminal is not as scary as people make it sound. Right now, you are the person making it sound scary.

No. You really don’t want to self host unless you are pretty familiar with how these services work. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up to get hacked.

If you’re afraid of the terminal, you won’t get far in self hosting. You should learn to use the terminal. It’s not as scary as people make it sound.

You mentioned having issues with SSH into your old server. You can install a desktop environment if it makes things easier for you, but you should still learn how to be proficient in the terminal. Proxmox might help. It lets you create and manage VMs through a web interface. It can be annoying if you’re not super familiar with networking though.

“How will we win if we can’t cheat?”

Definitely the left.

Is this copypasta? This smells like copypasta.

Bazzite runs the SteamOS interface. It’s extremely user friendly. It’s designed to look like a console.

They don’t use it unless my dad is watching a perfectly legal sports stream in the browser. It works really well though. I have 3 of those remotes, cause I love them.

For my parents, I got a $150 N100 mini PC (tiny little thing), installed Bazzite, installed Jellyfin, and got the Pepper Jobs W10 Gyro remote. You have to configure Jellyfin to know it’s running on a TV and to accept keyboard input (the remote acts like a keyboard), but then everything works great. It’s a little over your budget, with the added remote.

I was on the fence about Switch 2, leaning toward not getting one. This just solidified that position. No way I’m paying for something that charges for the instruction manual.

I agree that Discord blows, but it’s what my users use, and it’s free. Maybe there are free Matrix servers I could use instead of hosting it myself, but the problem is still that my users want a Discord server. Basically the same reason I use GitHub. It at least doesn’t blow, like Discord, but it’s not open. I’d prefer to use something else, but I’d get less user interaction. Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change. Thank you for being kind. :)

Power Operations -> Po Op -> Poop

Perfect.

Sounds nice. I would use it. Keep is one of the last Google services I still use.

Naming software is one of the hardest problems in all of software development.

My friend who’s been praising Plex for years and making fun of me for using Jellyfin instead just told me the other day he’s thinking about switching. It’s their new subscription fee that finally did it. xD

New GPUs don’t work on Linux? Where did you get that idea from?

I got ahead of the game a little bit by switching to Linux in 2008.

Good article. As an open source maintainer, I agree. The majority of interactions I have from my users are positive, but every once in a while, some entitled asshat does make unreasonable demands. I usually respond with a stern dressing down, but respectfully. If they continue, I’ll block them from whatever channel.

One thing that annoys me is when people get upset that I use Discord for support. I get it, it has drawbacks, but I’m not going to spend my limited resources hosting an alternative that most people won’t want to use anyway. Everything I use to host, distribute, and support my projects is free for both me and my users, and that’s because I’m not getting paid to make my projects. I also give out my email, so it’s not even a fair criticism.