"I do not want to play sysadmin in my spare time."
* proceeds to do a bunch of sysadminy things, but on a proprietary OS *
Huh...
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
38 points (97.5% liked)
Selfhosted
61021 readers
193 users here now
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.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Well, i get your snark but i disagree. To me, the annoying part of sysadminning is the "keeping things running" part. Doing them once is unavoidable.
Doing it once… how cute. You can always tell when someone only deals with enterprise level networking equipment. I’m not being critical, just realistic. Anything like this will eventually break. And in the weirdest ways imaginable.
Hey. I realise my comment may have come off as rude and made me sound like an asshole. It was not my intention to be disrespectful, apologies for that. The reason I posted that is because I read your post (thanks for taking the time to write and share it) and it left me a bit puzzled. I respect wanting something stable, familiar and that requires minimal maintenance, but you seemed to imply this is not possible with a more "traditional" NAS setup. Many of the points you raised about wanting an applliance-like experience are equally achievable on most Linux distros, with no license fees, and with a lot more flexibility, should you need it in the future (although I understand you don't need or want it).
Take Debian for example (a.k.a. the world's most boring distro, in a good sense). With the knowledge you demonstrated about the underlying services involved (BTRFS, Wireguard, etc), it would have taken you no more time to configure the same set of services on a minimal Debian install, it would also run rock-solid for many years, and updates would be entirely at your discretion (as they are with RouterOS). Plus, your pockets would be 50 EUR heavier. But for me, personally, by far the biggest avantage of going with Linux for a data storage solution like this is the possiblity of using ZFS.
Also, have this Debian meme:
I realise my comment may have come off as rude and made me sound like an asshole.
Nah, all good :)
Sure, you could use debian (nice meme), but i have an irrational aversion to it, mostly rooted in its packaging system
There is no such thing as maintenance free hosting. There is just saving it all up for the eventual outage.
I mean.... It would work fine to use ROS for this, and truly, my mikrotik devices are definitely hands-off except updates and few rule adjustments, but this isn't really any different from a Linux box. You have about as much initial config in a hardened immutable box as this.
The other thing is that mikrotik code isn't open, which might be an issue for some.
I want to add that I respect this approach, it just seems like about as much work as any other roll-your-own solution.
Yeah, their GPL "compliance" is a disgrace.
My thinking was that while the initial setup time might be comparable, i'm banking on saving time with long-term maintenance. Most regular linux distributions have so many moving parts that often also change from one major version to the next. One could argue a bespoke minimal installation based on alpine or something would alleviate that, but at the cost of much more setup time (for me, at least). But i'm not saying my way is particularly the best; it's just what works well enough for me.
Appreciate your words!
laughs in FreeBSD
but keeping a petting zoo of penguins up to date
Ha! Funny that. As far as creating a maintenance free NAS, my NAS(s) usually remain in a state of benevolent neglect. There's not much to do to them. They house backups, archives, and data at rest. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong.