To be fair, the app being posted is the server application which you can run locally. You do not need the phone application to use the web application.
Yes, that's what "Self hosted" means, you install it on your own server. Your choice if it's something "cloud" based and remote from you, or resides in your home.
Normally when talking about fitness tracking we are talking about embedded systems with very limited capacity both in terms of compute power and storage. You can use on-device storage to buffer tracking data, but any relevant and long term assessment and storage of the data has to be done off-site.
This app is not about biometric fitness tracking as in smart watches, it is about manually tracking workout information. In that case, there is no need for a server to start with.
Huh, I totally don't get this conjecture... What do you consider fitness tracking? In my mind a basic fitness app is essentially a replacement for a journal.
Is there a missing "product" for [easy] "self-hosting" in the cloud? (Or does it exist? Or will it only apply to a narrow kind of user?)
Like I think there should be some way to "one-button-click" install "self-hosted" apps in the cloud, tied to my personal account (and maybe with auth tied to that account). And I pay the usage fees for the cloud (hopefully on a per-request kind of basis, not an always-on server instance).
Is this a thing that I don't know about? Or is the market too narrow to be useful? (Otherwise, why doesn't it already exist?)
> Is this a thing that I don't know about? Or is the market too narrow to be useful? (Otherwise, why doesn't it already exist?)
I'm not super familiar with it, but I think what you describe was/is the goal of Sandstorm (https://sandstorm.org/).
Then there are also efforts like YunoHost (https://yunohost.org/) which are kind of like that, gives SSO auth and everything out of the box for all the apps it supports.
Even easier to use and less involved would be maybe what TrueNAS Core has in terms of apps support, which is essentially also "one-click install" of self-hosted applications, backed by local Kubernetes installation if I remember correctly.
A more involved option for people who want to manage more themselves (both infrastructure and configuration-wise) is using NixOS, which is the approach I chose for my own local infrastructure at home. For the packages supported by NixPkgs, many applications are like ~4 lines of configuration to setup and get integrated with the rest of the apps you run.
All of these options you can run in the cloud, bare-metal or at home servers, afaik.
The problem is that self hosted apps are rarely designed to be run serverless (why would they be?) and giving each app it’a own VPS or hosted container is going to price out the self-hosted crowd, to the point where you might as well be paying for some cloud software.
In particular, self hosted apps usually are using relational databases or SQLite which need persistent disk so can’t run serverless. They also sometimes require writing to physical disk instead of object storage like S3. Writing or rewriting apps to support serverless when they have no technical need to when self hosting would make things more complicated. Most CRUD frameworks used to write self-hosted apps do not work with NoSQL out of the box.
Thing is, almost every self hosted app supports docker now and so if you like, install portainer on a VPS or NUC or raspberry pi and you’ll be able to set up most self hosted apps easily without touching the command line.
> and giving each app it’a own VPS or hosted container is going to price out the self-hosted crowd,
As far as I know, myself and other self-hosters run these sort of applications/services on home infrastructure or VPSes/dedicated/bare-metal where multiple applications usually share one instance. This could be done with docker, or cgroups, or countless other ways. I'm not sure if that's what you mean with a "hosted container" though, don't think I've heard about that before.
Even decades ago, you could buy a web hosting account and simply click an icon to install Wordpress, CRMs, webmail clients, etc in your account and get started with minimal hassle. There are very likely many of these still around. Of course, if you are not a technical user, you are limited to what they provide.
In the realm of containers, there are also many many choices for this. Most are open source, some are commercial. The problem with all that I know of, is that when you want to use an app that isn't in their "store", or when you want to use it differently than how they have packaged it, either you can't do it because it's not supported, or you essentially have to learn docker from scratch anyway.
Several apps that try to solve this. Good one, but costly, is cloudron.
It allows you to one click install a wide range of self-hosted apps.
Cloudron itself is subscription software that can be installed on own server or many cloud options.
There are many more, though. Things like proxmox with app stores, which are easily installed in most clouds.
I don't know if you can reasonably generalize self hosting.
To a lot of people, self hosting is about getting complete (or effectively complete) control of your data and privacy. That can be compatible with the cloud.
(PS: they opted to go in a direction where it also includes some media-related features -- like tracking movies or books you've seen/read -- but this can be disabled).
Ok, this one’s baffling, especially learning at the end that FLOSS is bad because it’s meant to de-emphasize the “libre” part.
All OSS software is inherently without cost, that seems unquestioned here. So free only ever means one thing to non-laypeople, in this context. So isn’t FOSS already the neutral middle ground between OSS and FS??
Regardless, I’m struggling to conceive of how a piece of software could be OS but not F. I guess if it’s, like, surveillance software known to be used by governments…? Maybe OSS that is paradoxically restrictively licensed, threatening any forks or unauthorized compilations with legal action? That seems like a terribly naive proposition, but I’m sure it’s been floated by at least one MBA…
In other words: you can argue all day about the justifications for OS’ing your S being more related to removing cost barriers or to sharing control, but in the end, you clearly have to do both. Making “F[L]OSS” redundant at best, confusing at worst!
Surely I’m missing something, bc I know this has been litigated for many thousands of hours both pre- and post-Eternal September. But rn it just comes across as baseless pedantry
The "F" (free), "L" (libre), and "OS" (open source) all mean the same thing, the acronym is just meant to make extra-sure to include all the ways people refer to that kind of software (last "S).
There is open source software that requires payment to obtain.
There is open source software that you are not free to do whatever you want with (non-libre)
There is software available at no cost which is neither open source or libre.
Just about every permutation of these 3 concepts has some actual example in the real world. Please do not promote the idea that they are in any way synonyms.
Are there any privacy-friendly wearables in the fitness tech scene? It seems like most wearable gadgets send data to remote servers, whenever possible.
Most Garmin watches _can_ work without connecting to your phone and the app. It just stores the files locally on the watch and you can just connect it to your PC and read the files.
What sensor would you recommend? I have tried Apple Watch and i really only care about the heart rate. But it doesn't poll the heart rate constantly unless in exercise mode. I wish I could just constantly track the heart rate every second.
I'm using it (with the hosted service and app installed from f-droid) and we'll, the UI could be improved. Bigger issue is that there is no way to know in which series you are at the moment? Is the 3rd? The 4th? The 5th?
Also the timer between series stops working if you put wger in the foreground (I disabled all the battery optimizations etc for it in Android 15 on a Pixel 6a).
Also some features are just in the web UI.
But overall, it's a nice system and I keep using it.
Yes I did, but I'm not very skilled with mobile development and I don't want to take time from the gym ;) Anyway I'm going to have a few spare days in the near future, I might try
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I suppose an alternative design would be to be on-device storage first, and then have an optional sync to a server (or laptop/desktop).
The mobile app is also open source https://github.com/wger-project/flutter
I don't know how but I imagine you could build it and side load your own build to your phone?
https://raphael.lullis.net/thinking-heads-are-not-in-the-clo...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43021677
[0] localfirstweb.dev
That way your data is still in cloud and you don't actually need a server.
https://wger.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Like I think there should be some way to "one-button-click" install "self-hosted" apps in the cloud, tied to my personal account (and maybe with auth tied to that account). And I pay the usage fees for the cloud (hopefully on a per-request kind of basis, not an always-on server instance).
Is this a thing that I don't know about? Or is the market too narrow to be useful? (Otherwise, why doesn't it already exist?)
I'm not super familiar with it, but I think what you describe was/is the goal of Sandstorm (https://sandstorm.org/).
Then there are also efforts like YunoHost (https://yunohost.org/) which are kind of like that, gives SSO auth and everything out of the box for all the apps it supports.
Even easier to use and less involved would be maybe what TrueNAS Core has in terms of apps support, which is essentially also "one-click install" of self-hosted applications, backed by local Kubernetes installation if I remember correctly.
A more involved option for people who want to manage more themselves (both infrastructure and configuration-wise) is using NixOS, which is the approach I chose for my own local infrastructure at home. For the packages supported by NixPkgs, many applications are like ~4 lines of configuration to setup and get integrated with the rest of the apps you run.
All of these options you can run in the cloud, bare-metal or at home servers, afaik.
In particular, self hosted apps usually are using relational databases or SQLite which need persistent disk so can’t run serverless. They also sometimes require writing to physical disk instead of object storage like S3. Writing or rewriting apps to support serverless when they have no technical need to when self hosting would make things more complicated. Most CRUD frameworks used to write self-hosted apps do not work with NoSQL out of the box.
Thing is, almost every self hosted app supports docker now and so if you like, install portainer on a VPS or NUC or raspberry pi and you’ll be able to set up most self hosted apps easily without touching the command line.
As far as I know, myself and other self-hosters run these sort of applications/services on home infrastructure or VPSes/dedicated/bare-metal where multiple applications usually share one instance. This could be done with docker, or cgroups, or countless other ways. I'm not sure if that's what you mean with a "hosted container" though, don't think I've heard about that before.
Even decades ago, you could buy a web hosting account and simply click an icon to install Wordpress, CRMs, webmail clients, etc in your account and get started with minimal hassle. There are very likely many of these still around. Of course, if you are not a technical user, you are limited to what they provide.
In the realm of containers, there are also many many choices for this. Most are open source, some are commercial. The problem with all that I know of, is that when you want to use an app that isn't in their "store", or when you want to use it differently than how they have packaged it, either you can't do it because it's not supported, or you essentially have to learn docker from scratch anyway.
You’re not going to get per-request billing, but shared hosting is typically as cheap as you’re going to get for “always-on” web hosting.
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There are many more, though. Things like proxmox with app stores, which are easily installed in most clouds.
Also CasaOs and others.
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https://www.linode.com/marketplace/apps/
The only problem is that the existing apps wouldn't work with it.
To a lot of people, self hosting is about getting complete (or effectively complete) control of your data and privacy. That can be compatible with the cloud.
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Demo: https://demo.ryot.io/_s/acl_vUMPnPirkHlT
Code: https://github.com/IgnisDa/ryot
(PS: they opted to go in a direction where it also includes some media-related features -- like tracking movies or books you've seen/read -- but this can be disabled).
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html
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All OSS software is inherently without cost, that seems unquestioned here. So free only ever means one thing to non-laypeople, in this context. So isn’t FOSS already the neutral middle ground between OSS and FS??
Regardless, I’m struggling to conceive of how a piece of software could be OS but not F. I guess if it’s, like, surveillance software known to be used by governments…? Maybe OSS that is paradoxically restrictively licensed, threatening any forks or unauthorized compilations with legal action? That seems like a terribly naive proposition, but I’m sure it’s been floated by at least one MBA…
In other words: you can argue all day about the justifications for OS’ing your S being more related to removing cost barriers or to sharing control, but in the end, you clearly have to do both. Making “F[L]OSS” redundant at best, confusing at worst!
Surely I’m missing something, bc I know this has been litigated for many thousands of hours both pre- and post-Eternal September. But rn it just comes across as baseless pedantry
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_terms_for_free_s...
Deleted Comment
There is open source software that requires payment to obtain.
There is open source software that you are not free to do whatever you want with (non-libre)
There is software available at no cost which is neither open source or libre.
Just about every permutation of these 3 concepts has some actual example in the real world. Please do not promote the idea that they are in any way synonyms.