alt Hacker News> I don't think many advice non tech people to get in to self hosting, but there are a lot of people who do enjoy messing with computers who these articles are marketing to.
I agree, but even I, someone who does have this as a hobby and does self-host a few things, have my limits for the same reasons that the casuals do. Even when I have a computer that I can use for one more purpose, I rarely do that unless I know it will be set and forget, since having one more thing to deal with in my already overburdened life is a hard sell.
> The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.
Very true. I do hope some products like that will appear, but the workflow and UX will have to be damn near perfect, something which home automation often isn't (unless you use Home Assisant and thus have it as a hobby. Funny how that works).
I have the ikea home hub and it basically is maintanance free. There is no need or even a UI for updating/managing/reinstalling the OS. It just works and has been just working for years.
For other systems like photos and file storage the main complication would be around backups which fall back on the user. If your home automation hub dies, you just chuck a new one in and re-pair your lights. If your photo server drives die it's a disaster. Realistically you'd want to have a backup copy on the cloud, which would lead many casual users to wonder what the point of even hosting the server is if you still need to pay for the cloud backup.