yeah see here's the thing: I don't know what samba is and I've never "written" a webpage in my life, simple or no. A lot of people tell me "just use CLI, it's better!" But "better" usually ends up meaning "you have more control over all these little options that you never use!" I just don't get it. I watched TechnoDadLife do a side-by-side of OMV and CasaOS, and he was done with CasaOS setup in less than 2 minutes... OMV took a ton of customization, settings, plugin & terminal downloads, configs... nightmare. He says "if youre just managing media, use CasaOS or similar." and I have yet to see a better argument for CLI/pure headless. It seems a bit elitist hacker gatekeepy to me. Everyone always says "whatever works for you, but that thing that works for you is worse." for no real discernible benefit that I can understand.

Hey look at that, he has a video about Umbrel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwbjY1mqKvk

Awesome, thanks. Also anyone going under "TechnoDadLife" has a laser pointed right at me, marketing-wise.

Man, when I looked at the prox mox in action videos I got dizzy - so much stufffff! What would you say are the biggest advantages? It seems like it would be more of a project to take on...

Thanks so much for the detailed reply. It's great to hear from you (n others) that the "GUI" style can be easily accomplished without relying on either of these. I will look into Open Media Vault and Portainer as you and others have suggested. Very cool abt AudiobookShelf-- I was manuallyy downloading my audiobooks to my phone. I should look into something like you have.

Cool! Warts and all, I did have a pretty positive experience with CasaOS, esp as a beginner to both linux and selfhosting at the same time, it really helped me understand things, and of course, now it's familiar... it would be very cool to have that familiarity, but actively managed... because there are also lots of bugs/half-assed features in casaOS. Thanks.

That's the thing... I can't find much on them, other than that it all started as a crypto platform, but evolved beyond that, it's surprsing how little I know about it.... Someone just suggested it as a more "active project" that works a lot like CasaOS... seems like they're trying to sell an "easy, pre-packaged" home server, which is a neat idea for non-tech savvy types who want to own & unsubscribe... butttttt what OS even is this? Is this a custom linux distro? Is it just a gui running on top? It's hard to figure out exactly what their "os" really is.

what is enshittifying? is it monetization? Is Portainer a paid app/service?

why, though. how is it easier?

also you say CLI is better, but you don't say why at all.

OK, what is "a startpage for them with links" is that a service or do you mean create a webpage? I mean, most of what my non CLI users want to do is move/edit files. Like when you get a russian lang only file, or .exe malware... they just need to delete/move things sometimes. I don't know how a startpage helps that.

It's even better when the English word is so riddled with vowel syllabics that Japanese phonemes require that it wraps all the way around and becomes unrecognizable...even when it's "English." My fav: Makkudonarudo - マックドナルド even tho most people just call it "Maku-do" for McDonalds.

Also, gotta watch out... just when you think "Pants" is just "Pantsu" you actually just said "underwear" in Japanese.

bump! Links etc would be great OP!

busted!

Ban advertising.

No, seriously, think about it. Imagine a word where narrow, strictly defined thing called "advertisement" is illegal. I mean, obviously, we're in magic fairy wonderland here, but y'know... I live in a state where billboards are illegal. Nothing's truly impossible... just 'unthinkable' mostly. Without ads, the incentive to make the platform addictive evaporates, suddenly companies are competing just to, y'know, make a better platform.

Tomorrow I might as well see a manifestation of Q and watch a bewildered Picard shout "You can't judge all of humanity by this barbaric time!"

I'm jealous of your optimism.... and in the end of Caliban's war right now! I loved the series. I can only hope...

wow. Surprisingly awesome answer. Biff's Casino IS America right now

A coworker showed me a quote from this guy, Steve Magness (https://www.stevemagness.com/) that sums it up really well - When we're constantly 'killing time' on our phones/screens in every waking moment that our attention isn't otherwise required, we suck up the space that was once reserved for creativity and fill it with garbage instead. We fragment our attention and rarely get lost in our thoughts or follow up on cool ideas. Creativity is dying first before it's born because we don't just sit and engage with our own ideas like we did once...we just scroll.

The second factor is the giant, impossibly sophisticated psychological rat's maze the internet has become for content... we are fed much more than we truly discover, and every day 100k tons more AI shit is shoveled over real, genuine ideas... and it's that bullshit the algorithm will serve you. You have a lot less agency and exposure online than you THINK you do... and that is by design. If you have been on the internet for more than 10 years, then you remember when that was very much not the case and feel the difference.

Hang out with local, creative people in person, ask them what they're into. Stare out a window and think thoughts, shut your phone off and read books. The good news is that there is SO MUCH good shit in the world already that the decline of our civilization and its creative output isn't so bad, if you just get some distance from it.

Dems prove once again that they have NO IDEA how to represent the people who voted for them... or even just like, make themselves even slightly likable.