I don’t get that part. Can you explain it please?

Dokploy has a list of hundreds of “templates” where you basically one click install a working docker container with said app. But there is no deeper integration.

Is sandstorm different somehow?

I prefer dokploy and having full control over each aspect (like auth, backups and routing).

But this looks nice for when you don’t care and just want to use it as it is provided.

I played around with the pricing calc and it doesn’t seem worth it unless you’re hosting something at risk of being taken down by the gov & your regular VPS provider.

And the most sensible aproach would probably be (if you want to host something in the gray area, like a shadow library) to only switch to it WHEN you actually do run into legal trouble, not before. Unless of course you are absolutely sure that you will be taken down, but then you should rather host it on tor or tbh not at all …

TreeFold cost about double compared to a same spec regular VPS.

I guess the most resillient AND cost effective setup would be to run everything on your own hardware and use frp or pangolin to a very slim VPS. That way migration is easy and you can get the smallest capacity possible, costing only 2.50$ a month, which is more in line with other VPS providers.

But honestly best way to find out is to try out the service. I wasn’t able to find any websites that are specifically hosted on treefold, so maybe prepay for a month and just try it out. Maybe it runs like ass or is unreliable or there are hidden costs etc.

It says jeena.net is up but I get a 504.

After a minute, it works again.

Do you have like an on demand server that spins up the containers when a request comes in?

Not really selfhosted, but a decent open source app:

https://marble.kde.org/features.php

You probably can put it in a kasm workspace or noVNC docker container if you really want to selfhost it.

Places without a property tax:

Lichtenstein, Monaco, Cook Islands, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands.

If you want specifically “free land”:

Not a lot of people want to live there.

You can go to the bumfuck north in russia and nobody will come check whether you’ve built a house in the woods or not. In general, extremely rural places with weak law enforcement will work, albeit being technically illegal.

There are tribal lands in africa (and probably other tribal areas in latin america) that will accept you and you can build your own hut in their village. There are a couple of historic records of people doing that, even in modern times.

Yes and yes

You’re still paying rent (though up-front instead of monthly or quarterly

thats like saying buying a house is paying a lifetime of rent upfront. It’s true in some sense, but a pretty weird thing to claim.

I know all that and none of it contradicts what I said.

You remember when you could get a “free” phone with a subscription to a telecommunication service? It’s kind of like that. The phone is not really free. It is marketing bs. The price (and profit) is payed by you through the subscription.

I guess you could go full mr robot and install a rpi in the wall where there is free wifi and hope maintenance never finds it. But that would be super illegal.

Of course you have to pay

and that is my point.

At the beginning there was the metaphor of being a landlord. Depending on your location in the world, you can buy land, pay nothing monthly and own and use it for ever.

There is basically no way to do that with a server. But while yall were being obtuse about my point that one needs to “pay rent” for an internet connection. I actually found something interesting that might be a way:

SIMO Solis Lite Mobile WLAN Router - 100$ one time purchase price. And they claim:

Includes 1GB of free global data volume per month, for the lifetime of the device

Of course that only works as long as the company exists and is profitable or whatever they mean by “lifetime of the device” - they could literally build in a fuse that pops after 5 years.

I’ve never heard of an ISP that gives IPs for 0$. You get one through a subscribtion, so it is a rent, included with the rest of the service.

dynamic IP would be the default option included

Included in what? In a 0$ per month plan or in a x$ (x > 0) per month plan? If the plan is paid, you pay for what is included.

By “renting an IP” I mean paying a monthly subscription so that your internet service provider gives your home (which has your server) an IP so it is accessible through the intetnet.

It doesn’t matter whether that IP is static or dynamic, as you said there are free dynamic dns services.

A VPS has an IP and electricity included in the renting price, which is pretty good for starting small tbh. You can do surprisingly much with a 2$/month VPS.

Besides the huge upfront cost, your own server would cost you in your own time maintaining it, electricity, replacing broken hardware and a subscription to the internet.

But generally I agree with you, the term landlord is completely unfitting for this setup.

On a related note:

Is there any way to not rent anything at all?

I have my own physical server, renting a domain is optional, but renting an IP is mandatory afaik, or are there some ways (legal ones, availabe to a normal person at a reasonable price) to get the server on the internet for free or by paying only once?

Check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXkgbmr3dRA

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I have SFTPgo in a docker container with attached storage. Can access it through many protocols, but on linux I mount it via WebDav.

Whats neat is that I can also share files/folders with either other registered users or with a password or download only link and it has a web gui for that.

Why did you end up looking into it?

Cause people online kept saying that one should use it in their homelab. It’s mentioned in basically every such post and there are a lot of videos about rpi clusters with k3s. So I assumed it’s the way to go.

I basically do the same as you but with Dokploy cause the web ui makes it easier to manage than juggling ssh terminals and remote editing textfiles in an editor from the 19th century.

I’m a bit of a nerd but kubernetes was way too much for me. Currently I use dokploy on a raspberry pi which has a growing list of “recipes” in a “store”. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in the background and has a pretty selfexplanatory web gui.

It really helped me to starting my selfhosting journey by slowly dipping my toes and going a bit deeper each time. Might be worth checking it out. Sorry if this reads like an ad, I just really like it …