Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Of course, I don’t want anyone diving in completely blind, some basic knowledge, research, and interest are definitely needed. But if someone decides they really want to keep their data safe and under their own control, even something like family photos, they should be able to get started in a simpler way. Then, once the first step doesn’t seem too intimidating, they can deepen their technical skills. The goal of Safebox isn’t to replace that knowledge, just to make self hosting more accessible.

@cRazi_man@europe.pub I absolutely love your comments! You’ve chimed in on several of my posts already, and you always share such interesting stories and enthusiasm. I really hope it stays that way, keep being as passionate and helpful as you are, the self hosting community could use more people like you

@TopKnot@mas.to Yeah, it can definitely feel really complicated, especially when you’re just starting out. That’s actually one of the reasons we created Safebox, we went through the same struggles ourselves. We’re also working on proper documentation so others can better understand and learn from it.

By the way, is there a specific self hosted app you had in mind for storing the maps and documents you mentioned?

Thanks, must’ve missed that

Safebox is basically a framework to help you install and manage self hosted apps. It also includes features like remote access, backup, monitoring, and disk management (the last three are still in development). Safebox handles all the setup for you, DNS configuration, SSL certificates, and so on. If you want remote access, all you need to do is provide a domain (it can be an existing one, or you can register it with us). Of course, you can still use it locally, remote access is just an optional feature.

For people who don’t want to deal with the technical side, or who are still learning but want to try out self-hosting, I think Safebox makes things a lot easier and gives them a solid starting point

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, proper documentation is already in the works, and I hope that will make it clear how our project differs. Thanks for the suggestion!

I really like what you’re doing, keep it up!

We created Safebox mainly to make self-hosting easier, and proper, complete documentation is definitely something we want to provide, it’s already in the works. We also thought a lot of people might learn from it, but the scope is huge, so we’re still figuring out the right balance.

Should we cover the basic concepts too? How deep should we go? Introducing the software itself is the easy part, explaining all the related concepts in a clear, non-technical way is the real challenge.

Our goal isn’t to turn Safebox into a full-on cybersecurity course, but we do want users to understand what’s happening and why certain features matter, so they don’t feel lost.

As for the sources you mentioned, I have to admit I’m not entirely sure either. During my university studies I only touched on cybersecurity partially, mostly around the risks users face and how they respond. Yes, there definitely needs to be some basic guidance on security, what the main risks are and how to keep yourself safe. Honestly, I think this could work even better as a community project, where different people can contribute their own approaches and share experiences on how they protect their setups and what has worked for them.

Thanks your detailed feedback, I’ll try to go through all your points.

When we said Docker, we meant the desktop version, basically so anyone can try Safebox on their own desktop and check out the early product. We also added an auto docker install for server setups a few days ago.

You’re right about the docs, they’re still in the works, and proper documentation will be released soon.

That other post you mentioned got a bit too heated, so the mods took it down. Definitely wasn’t our intention to stir up tension, and it wasn’t about not liking the answer or linking it to the product. Right now we’re mainly looking for early feedback and for people curious enough to help test things out.

Thanks for explaining your point of view and your suggestions. It means a lot for us in this early state, and looking forward of any future feedback of your about the actual product.

Safebox is currently in mvp state, heavily under developement, and we looking for early user feedbacks. We created the dc server as a way to recieve these feedbacks and to lay the foundation for the future community.

Yes, that is kind of the case. Our goal and plan for the future is to offer an alternative with features you mentioned above. Safebox is currently in mvp state with limited features. If you take a look at the actual dashboard you can notice “monitoring” and “disk management” features alongside “backup”(both on Lan and geo-redundant between fellow users) will be available and updates for the OS and apps are already working it can be found (temporarily) under “notifications”. At the moment we looking for early user feedbacks and testing demand.

Thanks again for your suggestion we recently added docker autoinstall. Currently supporting ubuntu, debian and raspbian. https://github.com/safeboxnetwork/framework-scheduler/blob/main/README.md Thanks, and feel free to share any further feedback or remark.

Since a few of you mentioned the Docker installer, we added it. https://github.com/safeboxnetwork/framework-scheduler/blob/main/README.md It currently supports ubuntu, debian and raspbian. Thanks, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you run into any issues.

Thanks for pointing that out, we actually went back and rechecked the whole auto docker install idea because of comments like yours. And yeah, you’re right, most people running this on a real server are using Debian anyway, so having an automatic install there does make sense.

The reason the current guide shows docker desktop on macOS is just because we’re still in beta, and we assumed beginners would try Safebox on a regular desktop first. But we get that it’s not the best example for server software, and we’ll improve that.

We’ve brought back the auto-install script and tested it on Debian/ubuntu/raspbian. If you want to try it out here it is: https://github.com/safeboxnetwork/framework-scheduler/blob/main/README.md If you notice any issues, we’d appreciate your feedback.

Thanks😀 As I mentioned in a previous comment, we tried to integrate auto docker installation, but ultimately decided that it would be easier for users to install Docker themselves, and the guide explains the installation process step by step. This way, Safebox can be installed on any os.

Thanks, we’ll consider it and see if we can make some changes to the design.

Thanks 😀 Safebox doesn’t automatically install Docker, but installing Docker is easy and we’ve got detailed instructions in our installation guide on the website. All you need is a working os, then you can follow the guide to set up docker before launching Safebox.

Thanks for the comment! In older Safebox versions we tried a Docker install script for Debian, but it felt too rigid. Since Safebox is meant to run on pretty much any os, we figured it’s easier for people to just install docker themselves. It’s really simple, and we even cover it in the Safebox install guide.

Also, unlike CasaOS, YunoHost, or Cloudron, which only run on certain OSes, Safebox works on any os as long as Docker is installed, making it much more flexible. That’s basically the “price” we pay for supporting any os.

Thanks😀Glad it looks useful. That’s exactly what we had in mind, making things like reverse proxy and app setup way easier.

Thanks for your feedback 😀 Yeah, the app list on the website can be a bit confusing since it moves around, we’ll fix that soon. For now, these are the apps you can use in Safebox: Jellyfin, HomeAssistant, Immich, Nextcloud, Guacamole, Leantime, Gitea, Vaultwarden, Transmission, SMTP, Outline, Filebrowser, PocketID We’re always working on adding more apps and improving existing features, so the list will keep growing over time.