Look for escape hatches. I run a self-hosted Cloudron server. The software I host on my home server is FOSS via Cloudron, but Cloudron itself is a service that keeps each of the FOSS apps up to date with security upgrades and data migrations when necessary. It’s a huge boon to running a self-hosted server.

But when it comes down to it, they could potentially close up somehow (new leadership, get bought out, shut down etc.) They’ve left an escape hatch though–you can bundle and build your own apps, with a CloudronManifest.json etc. This would allow me to continue to run and update software if I absolutely needed to, without their support.

From Hobby to Hero: Linux Powers the Curious

Build a Legacy, not a Lock-In

Join a Movement, not a Marketplace

For the Mavericks and Makers

Tailored for You, By You

Be Your Own Tech Support

There is a certain strain of open source development that is nearly anti-marketing, as far as I can tell. They choose names like “gimp”, “git”, “frotz”, “borg”, “pooch”, “butt”, “slurm”, “mutt”, “snort”, and “floorp”.

I had some trouble with ZFS and kernel compatibility when upgrading the OS, so I switched to btrfs. It’s been fine for 3 years now, including a kernel upgrade.

Working development system. I got quite far, but after so much work, became very frustrated when a VSCode plugin wouldn’t work properly because it needed (and assumed) read/write access. I didn’t want to have to manage and think about every little plugin I experimented with at the OS level.

I really wanted to like NixOS (and I do, theoretically), but I couldn’t dedicate more than 5 full days over Christmas to learn how to get to a working development system.