Summary
A user tested FreedomBox and compared it to YunoHost. The user identified the strengths and weakness of FreedomBox, and I think the feedback is very valuable.
I encourage everyone to check it out. @jvalleroy @njoseph @mray @sunil
LINK: https://blog.arkadi.one/yunohost-and-freedombox-self-hosting-made-easy-er
I read he article and wasn’t surprised at all. We currently have a huge UX debt and don’t make much progress in that regard. It’s not clear what version was used, but it probably had the half implemented card interface. I would be so great if we would not have to ship a construction site of an interface.
Just reviewed YunoHost. I like freedombox interface much more. VPN is a big ticket item and OpenVPN is being replaced with WireGuard. Neither support WireGuard but I couldn’t find any VPN on YunoHost. OpenVPN on freedombox bricks my PI 3 B+ after reboot so I’m in the cold looking for a SBC home server with VPN. But YunoHost have NextCloud was nice
The live online Freedombox demo currently looks as if there are only two apps. It’s really much better than that! FreedomBox will probably never have as many apps as Yunohost. It’s just harder to get packages into Debian. Some, like Nextcloud, aren’t interested in trying. To get lots of apps, probably the easiest way is adding Yunohost as an optional supplementary repository, available through the FreedomBox GUI.
Both projects would presumably also benefit from making it as easy as possible to copy code from one another. For instance, FreedomBox does not have e-mail hosting, and apparently Yunohost does. Could FreedomBox usefully copy parts of this implementation? Apparently the pain of mail configuration was what motivated the creation of Yunohost.
On the other hand, the stability and security of using only Debian packages is the sort of thing many server admins like. You get security updates. You can go on vacation, leaving a server that others rely on, and it will probably be fine. Does FreedomBox aim to offer a time-saving version of the standard Debian server? Obviously the less background knowledge you already have, the more time FreedomBox or Yunohost will save you.
How to people feel about the review as a description of FreedomBox’s “designed for a system admin” niche? The review says:
“Yunohost is targeted towards individuals with some computer knowledge, while Freedombox seems targeted towards people with lots of sysadmin experience”
Is concentrating on tools wanted by those with a fair amount of background knowledge just normal for a project at this stage of maturity, or is it a permanent position?
If FreedomBox is concentrating on the serveradmin-end, are there other things that might fit this niche? GNUnet, for instance? Suggestions?
The author of the blog post probably used the stable version of FreedomBox from 2017. He recently tried out the online demo and had a change of opinion.
The live online Freedombox demo currently looks as if there are only two apps.
You have to login to see all the installed apps.
Only a small representative subset of the total available apps are installed.
Is concentrating on tools wanted by those with a fair amount of background knowledge just normal for a project at this stage of maturity, or is it a permanent position?
I wouldn’t say the project is concentrating on tools that require a lot of technical knowledge. We just happened to include applications that fit into that category because they were already Debian packaged, have reasonable use cases for a FreedomBox user and there were people willing to package them for FreedomBox. The project itself doesn’t expect the user to have any system administration knowledge.
You can find the near-term development goals of the project here.
https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Roadmap2019