A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.
Resources:
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
Not that I use them anymore anyway, cancelling my old account, but name and shame any companies who conveniently can't support their free base. Also - it's VNC. It's a protocol. There's a dozen free clients out there.
TightVNC. Use TightVNC.
Before it got enshittified with an update a few years ago, I used the RealVNC Android app to connect to a few of my own VNC servers. Wasn't interested in any of the fancy features, I just wanted a good VNC app.
Now I use AVNC. It's solid, performs better than RealVNC used to, and it's open source! You can get it on FDroid.
Thanks for the recommendation, only thing keeping me on RealVNC Android was the better UI 🙏
I use anydesk for a single pc2pc connection and lately it's been popping up with a 60 second ad saying like "we're glad you are using it and you should start paying for a business license." I use it about once every couple weeks. Like I'm not paying for your shit for a few times a month use.
This was the catalyst I needed to switch to self hosting rustdesk. It was a bit of a pain setting up, but people comfortable with cli would handle it much better than I did.
This looks nice, but stupid they put things like ldap behind a paywall when every other service includes it for free.
Every other service: "oh yeah, oops" scratches that feature off the free plan
You: "no wait not like that"
It's just weird that it's... half open source and half not. Other services are simply open source. I don't know why they bother having the free one be open source if half of the code is paywalled
Developers also need to make money to live and survive. Why do you think you're entitled to all of their work for free? If it's such an inconvenience, you should try your hand at coding an alternative and giving all of it for free. We're waiting.
I am a developer, you're right. I think I'll fork it and add my own ldap auth in. Good chance to learn Rust.
I don't like it because that's exactly how things like this RealVNC thing happen. These companies all start with good will, we have a free tier, we are open source, we love the community. Then one day they snap it all back, say "Hey we never said it'd be forever, did you look in subsection 6 of section 42? It said in there that your license wasn't a license and now you need to pay up" So yeah, especially in context of RealVNC I'm real jaded against "good will companies".
You want to charge for your product? Super, do so. Don't lie and say you're doing good and then rip it out later. Gitea is a good example of that.
I use teamviewer to access a relative's computer when she needs help, and it's the same nagware. Like okay, I understand there are cloud costs. But where exactly are they here? I am a row in a database, you store my credentials and probably a couple of keys. All data is between the host computer and me, there's no processing of any kind there. Why exactly should I pay you monthly? There's no value benefit.
Convenience (after you install it, all you have to do is enter the code and you're connected, no other setup required), familiarity (it's the default name people will think of or find if they want remote access - that alone means they can get away with pushing their users slightly more) and - IMHO most importantly - connectivity: if two computers can connect to the TeamViewer servers, they will be able to connect to each other.
That's huge in the world of broken Internet where peer to peer networking feels like rocket science - pretty much every consumer device will be sitting behind a NAT, which means "just connecting" is not possible. You can set up port forwarding (either manually or automatically using UPnP, which is its own bag of problems), or you can use IPv6 (which appears to be currently available to roughly 40% users globally; to use it, both sides need to have functional IPv6), or you can try various NAT traversal techniques (which only work with certain kinds of NAT and always require a coordinating server to pull off - this is one of the functions provided by TeamViewer servers). Oh, and if you're behind CGNAT (a kind of NAT used by internet providers; apparently it's moderately common), then neither port forwarding or NAT traversal are possible. So if both sides are behind CGNAT and at least one doesn't have IPv6, establishing a direct link is impossible.
With a relay server (like TeamViewer provides), you don't have to worry about being unable to connect - it will try to get you a direct link, but if that fails, it will just act as a tunnel and pass the data between both devices.
Sure, you can self host all this, but that takes time and effort to do right. And if your ISP happens to use CGNAT, that means renting a VPS because you can't host it at home. With TeamViewer, you're paying for someone else to worry about all that (and pay for the servers that coordinate NAT traversal and relay data, and their internet bandwidth, neither of which is free).
So if both sides are behind CGNAT and at least one doesn't have IPv6, establishing a direct link is impossible.
Tailscale is piss easy to install and set up and works just fine for making a direct link from a CGNATed connection.
Right, now get a borderline computer-illiterate person to connect to your network, ensure their firewall isn't misconfigured to block all incoming traffic (with TeamViewer, this configuration would still work because the device just connects to the TV server) and open and set up a completely separate screen sharing program.
I know none of these steps are difficult if you have any idea what you're doing, but I've met plenty of people who would most likely need assistance going through the motions. Funnily enough, the best way to do it remotely would probably be to get them to install TeamViewer to then set this up for them remotely.
By the way, as far as networking goes, Tailscale does the same thing TeamViewer does, just for a VPN instead of a screen sharing application - it will try to do all the NAT punchthrough techniques and IPv6 connection and fall back on tunneling through relay servers if all else fails. It's not any more of a direct connection than TV.
Our company pays for TeamViewer, and I still get nagged all the time, so there's no point in giving them money, they still nag you all the time.
that's actually really good to know
I had that happen for a while too, somehow it thought I was using it too much or something that wasn't for personal use. You can request a whitelist if you are so inclined. The process was pretty simple: https://anydesk.com/en/whitelist-request
After I did that I haven't seen that pop back up in over a year.
These companies are so short sighted. They are destroying the ability for the people who might push this software for use in a business environment to use it at home, test it out, learn it. This depletes the pool of experts and supporters that would expand their product's use over time.
Microsoft and VMware are the worst offenders at the moment. I feel if you're a competent on-premises Microsoft sysadmin you'll have work for the rest of your life, because they aren't MAKING on-premises Microsoft sysadmins anymore.
*edited my last sentence for clarity
That's really funny because I am in that position at work where I can make suggestions - or throw down the ban hammer.
I've successfully migrated 3 companies away from Google Cloud because of my horrible personal experience with them. There are so many products I've used that have been great and others terrible. You're exactly right, that's why individual free tiers existed - to encourage us to try them to push them at work.
I'm in the same position, and it feels so damn powerful. I've convinced an entire university to ditch Ubuntu in favor of Linux Mint, and I'm also advocating for replacing our aging VMWare servers (with a soon-to-expire license) with Proxmox.
because they aren't MAKING Microsoft sysadmins anymore.
I mean as opposed to what? Windows admins probably still make up the lions share of Sysadmins and I don’t really see how that would stop now.
They are making Cloud Microsoft sysadmins, as opposed to on-premises sysadmins. Which means the new crop of admins are just high tier application admins, and have no idea how to manage infrastructure, configure hardware, or actually troubleshoot problems with the application, since they don't have access to it at that level. All of this makes businesses more and more reliant on the cloud, which is exactly what these providers want.
So glorified help desk folks... Kids these days don't have a clue how anything actually works...
Me, still using SSH with X forwarding: 🐧
Why bother with X? Just do l33t CLI h4xx0rs
That's what I do 99% of the time, but sometimes I have dedicated hardware hooked up to the host machine and need visualizations.
I think the main reason this comes as a Fuck You to a lot of folks is that this came with (don't know if it still does) Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS as the default VNC software. So a lot of hobbyists might have not thought about this in a long time and are suddenly facing needing to set up SSH suddenly because the VNC they were using is now off the table. (Makes me glad I defaulted to SSH+keys pretty soon after learning how to use it)
It probably should have never been bundled as the default for a hobbyist operating system. I guess we've seen the writing on the wall for the Raspberry Pi Foundation making bad moves for a while now.
Oh man, I didn't even think about this. Anyone have any good guides on replacing RealVNC on raspbian with an alternative for our new linux friends who don't know how to do it easily?
BEFORE you mess with your VNC, it is extremely important to have a backup connection. So either you have the ability to connect your pi to a monitor and a keyboard locally, or you really, really should setup SSH before you mess with your VNC server.
Use SSH with a Certificate, described here: https://raspberrypi-guide.github.io/networking/connecting-via-ssh ("passwordless") This guide doesn't show how to set up SSH, but how to install a key in a more detailed way: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-ssh-keys/
The good thing: Once you got this working, you're basically done. Just ditch VNC and go straight to SSH from now on. It's more secure and has better performance usually.
Yet, if you like your VNC and want to continue using it, you first connect via SSH do not do this while using a VNC connection! Now, first, you do all this: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-vnc-raspberry-pi-os then you do a
sudo update-alternatives --list vncserver
sudo update-alternatives --list vncserver-x11
you should see tightvnc listed there. Don't freak out if one of the two returns an error that the application was not found. That's okay. Not all versions of Raspbian used the same application name in the past, so I listed them both. As long as one of them works, you're fine.
Then, you do a
sudo update-alternatives --config vncserver
sudo update-alternatives --config vncserver-x11
and change it to tightvnc. now you can stop your running VNC:
sudo vncserver-x11 -service -stop && sudo vncserver -service -stop
sudo vncserver-x11 -service -start && sudo vncserver -service -start
Once you did that, connect to tightvnc as described in the article. If this works, do
sudo apt uninstall realvnc
You should now be able to connect via VNC without weird account bullshit.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/bookworm-the-new-version-of-raspberry-pi-os/
So reading around it looks like Raspberry Pi Foundation now suggests TigerVNC because its optimized for Wayland and the newer version of Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) is all Wayland now. RealVNC is not optimized for Wayland and now is pulling this shit on Home users.
I haven't tested this myself yet, just found it through some quick searching.
How-To Set Up TigerVNC on RPi OS Bookworm: https://picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/tigervnc-and-realvnc-on-raspberry-pi-bookworm-os/
But this How-To seems to recognize the reasons why the changeover is happening and what RPi Foundation suggests to use, so it seems like a good place to start.
TigerVNC also seems to be Open Source and unpaid, so it seems like a valid replacement option for the moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TigerVNC
It looks like Bookworm is supported all the way back to the Pi 3B+ which is good news for me, specifically. Sounds like its some hoops to jump through in the Raspberry Pi OS Imaging Tool to get it to happen, but it's there.
I am unsure about TigerVNC support for previous versions of the RPi OS, but its maybe still possible for older models.
Long-time happy TigerVNC user. Solid product. Active development. Responsive to bug reports and feature requests.
What is the point of paying for a VNC client when there are 100 other free VNC clients?
The point is hoping there are enough dumb people out there willing to pay for software that is freely available after you lie some to their face.
See also anything that Microsoft produces, they are a billion dollar company with that shit somehow.
Rustdesk works great, and it's self hosted.
It's still free, just under a different plan named lite https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/plan/lite/
Yeah it's annoying and shitty, but it's not so bad.
Free for now. If they wanted to let you keep using it for free they would have said so in the notices.
If you keep using it they'll keep thinking you're a possible income source.
Just FYI, there is still a FREE tier of VNC (now called Lite) that is for home use for up to 3 computers. So the only real change is going from 5 free to 3, which may work just fine for some.
You will need to “relicense” the 3 machines, but it’s pretty straightforward and you can even change the license while using the VNC connection itself.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| VNC | Virtual Network Computing for remote desktop access |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
[Thread #786 for this sub, first seen 5th Jun 2024, 18:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I used to use it a lot, but for a while now (maybe 2 years) I have just been using VPN+SSH
You still have realvnc lite. It is free, 1 user, 3 machines, less features, but the basics still there.
I just started messing with linux on an old laptop. Tried VNC and got annoyed. Switched to xRDP and it works as intended but performance is lackluster on a local network.
Anyone have thoughts or tips?
That's about all I've used too. Microsoft did a few things right, and RDP was one of them. For Linux, there just isn't much. Honestly now I just SSH into things I need remotely, there's few things I don't need just SSH for.
I've been using NoMachine a lot for remote desktop and it works great! SSH for everything else tho. Never really liked VNC, was always a RDP person.