What’s happening on your servers? Any interesting news things you tried?

I didn’t do anyone other than updating Mastodon (native deployment) lately due to a lack of time. Reading so much about Immich caused me to consider trying it in parallel to Nextcloud but I’m not sure if I want to have everything twice.

Not quite homelab, but I’m about to install Linux Mint on my mom’s laptop and that had me thinking about creating an off-site backup in her place again since she has a fiber connection. I’m still not sure about the potential design though, but currently my only backup is in the same rack as the live stuff.

  • matsdis@piefed.socialEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    I’ve set up Kavita for my e-books. Nice UI, looks promising, and I’ve added some books. I haven’t really used it yet, because half of this was just an excuse to try podman (instead of docker). I wanted to set it up to run as unprivileged user, without the docker daemon running as root. That wasn’t too hard, but it was definitely a few extra steps.

    But something about Kavita didn’t sit well with me. Maybe I don’t self-host enough stuff to know what’s normal, but there is a donate button, which I don’t mind, but its tooltip says: “You can remove this button by subscribing to Kavita+.”

    I’m donating to a few software projects already, and I have developed a substantial amount of free software myself. There is nothing wrong with asking for money. But what I cannot stand is when software running on my own device is intentionally acting against my interests. And this tooltip was very clear about not letting me do something that I might want to do.

    So I checked the source code for more. I found another anti-pattern: telemetry is opt-out instead of opt-in. But that seems to be it, I didn’t find anything worse than that. So… fair I guess, if the author wants it that way. It’s still free software. It looks like I could delete all the Kavita+ stuff myself and re-build. Which I’m going to do if I keep using it. But this is now an extra step that prevents me from just using it, because I need to feel in control of what I run. Kind of self-inflicted, I guess…

    • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      2·
      23 hours ago

      I’ve been running Kavita for a year and a half +, and honestly cannot tell where the donate button is, other than going into the settings and clicking the “kavita+” selection. Maybe I’m oblivious. Can you share what you’re seeing? As well with the telemetry option?

      • matsdis@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        14 hours ago

        Telemetry is in Server -> General -> Allow Anonymous Usage Collection. When you opt-out, it also send a final message to the server that you’ve opted out. The the telemetry itself looks reasonable, I don’t mind sending it. It’s really just the dark pattern of opt-out vs of opt-in that bothers me.

        The donate button is the heart in the bottom left menu (not visible in the settings). It’s unobtrusive. I wouldn’t bother to remove it, except the tooltip says that I have to pay to remove it - now it has to go. Asking for donations is fine, but asking for money to remove a button is disgusting.

        • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          5 hours ago

          Thanks!

          Telemetry: I was able to find it, but it was already disabled. Maybe i noticed and unchecked it when I initially setup.

          Donate button: Ah, I see where you mean. Interestingly I do not see it when accessing from my mobile device, either as a mobile site or requesting a desktop site. But when accessing it from a desktop browser I do see it in the bottom left.

          A quick test shows ublock origin can block the element from showing. I believe that even if the user donates, it is not sufficient to hide this button, and the user must opt to pay for Kavita+ which is a subscription, not a one time license/etc, and forgoing it may lock other features a user is interested in.

          https://wiki.kavitareader.com/donating/ https://wiki.kavitareader.com/kavita+/