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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: December 5th, 2023

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  • As ikidd mentioned, definitely speed and access. It’s just a react web-app. There’s no VM required, and it’s not streaming a video capture of a desktop. I’m actually amazed at how performant it is. It loads almost instantly and feels like a regular desktop, even on mobile.

    Even with all the windows open in the screenshot and streaming a transcoded video, it still uses less memory than a single open YouTube tab.


  • One of the main reasons I ended up building a home server was that one of my drives failed in my main PC, and I lost a lot of my data (I know, I know). When I built my server, I intended it to be used as a backup. I was able to recover most of my data, but a lot of the filenames and directory structure were lost. I ended up just dumping all of this onto my server.

    I wanted a way to go through all my recovered files and organize them. I needed to be able to play any unnamed music files and name them + put them in the appropriate directory. I also produce music so some of the files couldn’t just be re-downloaded. Similarly with any text/video/pictures/etc.

    I’m running Ubuntu server and I can’t watch videos or listen to audio via a shell, so I needed a front end. I initially tried file browser but it was slow and clunky, and I couldn’t have multiple directories open at once for dragging and dropping.


  • Thanks!

    I tried nextcloud initially. It seemed a bit bulky and slow for me, with a lot of extra stuff I wasn’t going to use. I know you can disable features and customize it, but it just wasnt really a good fit for me.

    This initially started as an exercise to find out what is possible and see what I could manage to do by myself. As I progressed, I started realizing the possibilities and am so far very happy with how it’s turning out.

    I honestly didn’t realize there were so many existing alternatives (orb, ArozOS, etc). However, this is built entirely in react and can therefore load and run any JavaScript/HTML easily as a plugin. I think it’s a bit more modular than the alternatives in that sense.

    Either way it’s been a fun project to work on, and it fits my needs exactly how I want.

    After seeing all the responses I’ll very likely make it all open source so maybe others can contribute and customize it for themselves. Although I am a bit shy to release my code to public scrutiny lol 😂. I have a bad habit of not leaving comments and I’m sure there are plenty of places where people will point out flaws and wonder why the hell I did x instead of y…



  • Thanks!

    Another reason for the project was that I too wanted a desktop experience while also being being able to access remotely. I just didn’t want to open any “scary” ports on my server lol. I can throw this whole thing behind 2fa and it’s still completely isolated in a docker container, thus it has as much or as little privilege as I want.

    I actually can ssh into my main server through this, if desired, without opening any ssh ports publicly.





  • Link doesn’t work for me, but I’m starting to see what you mean.

    Either way, this has been a fun project to work on and I’ve only been working on it since around October, so not like years of commitment or anything. I’ve learned a lot, even having been programming professionally for years, so overall I’d say it’s been a worthwhile venture, especially considering I originally was only building this for myself.



  • mhredox@lemmy.worldOPtoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldWorking on an emulated-OS docker container
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    9 months ago

    Interesting 🤔 I’ve never heard of orb. This is the second similar project I’ve gotten responses about. I honestly had no idea anything similar even existed. Why are these not more popular? I can see a million different use-cases for apps such as this.

    That being said, I tried the orb demo and support on mobile was terrible. I’m aiming to have it be fully touch/mobile supported.