Immich is a Google Photos clone, and when they say "self-hosting", they mean SELF-HOSTING. You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing. Nightmare upgrades, tons of weird bugs related to syncing.

If your solution to an issue is "just reset the Redis cache", this is when I am done.

Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Photos for others.

Not my experience hosting immich for close to two years now. There was only one "breaking change" a long time ago where you would have to manually change a docker image in the compose file, but since then things have been smooth for me.

Immich may not be the pinnacle of all software development, but with the alternative being Google photos:

- Uploading too many photos won't clog my email and vice versa

- I'm not afraid of getting locked out of my photo account for unclear reasons and being unable to reach anyone to regain access

- If I upload family photos from the beach, then my account won't get automatically flagged/disabled for whatever

- Backups are trivially easy compared to Google takeout

- The devs are reachable and responsive. Encounter a problem? You'll at least reach a human being instead of getting stranded with a useless non-support forum

I would instead say that my (and my family's) photos are too important to me to pass their hosting on to a company known for its arbitrary decisions and then being an impenetrable labyrinth if there is an issue.

So you do pay some price, but it is an illusion to think that the price of Google photos (be that in cash, your data or your effort) is much lower.

Things that did break during this time: - my hacky remote filesystem - network connectivity of a too cheap server but these were on me and my stinginess.

Actually, I've setup a proxmox server last week that run a couple of self-hosted application. I've nextcloud running and it was fairly easy to setup. The next item on my list WAS Immich. I decided against trying to deploy it. The reason is simple: they are essentially forcing the use of Docker, which I won't touch at at all. Either a native proxmox container (which is just lxc) or a proper VM, but I keep those in reserve as they can be heavy. I'm not asking of them to create a native package for debian or a container image; a simple install script that bootstraps the application (checks & install itself and dependencies), bootstrap the database and basic config (data directory, url & ports, admin password) is more than enough. The same script should be use to update the application if possible, or provide an updater on the admin panel to update the application without manual steps or data migrations. Adguard Home does all of this perfectly in my opinion. I know Immich thinks they are making things "easier" to just dump everything into a docker container, but some of us wont touch it at all. Same reason I avoid any projects that heavily relies on nodejs/npm ecosystem.

I really don't understand this take. A script that installs all required dependencies is fine if and only if you are dedicating a machine to immich. It probably requires some version of node, with possibly hidden dependencies on some python, it uses ffmpeg, so all related libraries and executables need to be there. You then have a couple separate DBs, all communicating together. Let's not talk about updates! What if you're skipping versions? Now your "simple install script" becomes a fragile behemoth. I would NOT consider this if it was non docker-native. Plus, I don't have a server with enough resources for a lot of VMs, with all of their overhead and complications, just to have one per service. Nowadays there are many ways to run a container not just the original docker.com software, and you can do that on pretty much any platform. Even Android now!

I've never understood it either. I still deploy some things into their own respective manual deployments but for lots of things having a pre-made docker compose means I can throw it on my general app VM and it'll take 5 seconds to spin up and auto get HTTPS certs and DNS. Then I don't lose hours when I get two days into using something and realize it's not for me.

Also have you read some of the setup instructions for some of these things? I'd be churning out 1000 lines of ansible crap.

Either way since Proxmox 9.1 has added at least initial support for docker based containers the whole argument's out the window anyway.

Me neither. Docker is the platform agnostic way to deploy stuff and if I maintained software, it is ideal - i can ship my environment to your environment. Reproducing that yourself will take ages, or alternatively I also need to maintain a lot of complex scripts long-term that may break in weird ways.

What are some arguments against using docker?

I think it's the best of every world. Self contained, with an install script. Can bring up every dependent service needed all in one command. Even your example of "a simple script" has 5 different expectations.

> Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos

That is a totally reasonable view. But others have different preferences. I, for example, do not want to share all my photos with Google, govvies and anyone else they leak them to.

So I self host, back up and share my files with the family. I can always dump what I want to insta, etc. but it is my choice what to share, picture by picture, with default "off". And have no dark patterns trying to catch a finger accidentally hitting a "back up to cloud" for the full album.

That, to me, is a big deal, worth dealing with occasional IT hassles for. Which is just a personal preference.

>> Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos

pixelfed may be what the parent want then. I don't like that it is PHP, but as long as they adhere to the ActPub protocal, we can roll our own in whatever flavor.

Or perhaps Photoview? https://github.com/photoview/photoview

I've been waiting what feels like years for immich stable to be released for this reason. Luckily it finally happened about a month ago. I'm about to go through swapping out the main OS SSD on my server. If I'm able to see the immich backups after reinstalling TrueNAS I'm going to call it resilient enough for me.

Because it doesn't solve your problem does not mean it solves the wrong problem.

> You need to be a web dev or a sys admin to be able to wrangle that thing.

I totally disagree. You do need a tiny bit of command line experience to install and update it (nothing more than using a text editor and running `docker compose up`), but that's really it. All administration happens from the web UI after that. I've been using Immich for at least 2 years and I've never had to manually do something other than an update.

> Immich solves the wrong problem. I just want the household to share photos - I don't want to host a Google Photos for others.

Honestly, I can't understand what exactly you're expecting. If Google Photos suits your needs for sharing photos with others, that's great! As for Immich, have you read how it started[0]? I think it's solved the problem amazingly well and it still stays true to its initial ambitions.

[0]: https://v1.142.1.archive.immich.app/docs/overview/welcome

Such a weird take. Of course "self hosting" means "self hosting".

Sure it could be easier/safer to manage, everything can be better.

Over the last couple of years hosting it I had a single issue with an upgrade but that was because I simply ignore the upgrade instructions and YOLOed the docker compose update.

Again, is it perfect? No. Would I expect a non tech savy user to manage their own instance? Again no.

What? It is literally just start the container and forget. When upgrading it is change the version tag and restart the container.

Upgrades are frequent but no hassle.

I have been running this for half a year. It might have been more work earlier?

My household is using this for our shared photos repository and everyone can use it. Even the kids.

There is both direct web access and an iPhone app.

I run Immich for more than two years and there was an upgrade to 1.33 I think around spring 2024 that required special instructions on editing docker compose file because they changed the vector database. I think there was also a database migration same year when - if you did not update the version regularly - would need to run two step upgrade. They provided plenty of documentation always. A while ago sync was quite wonky but they improved that a lot lately.

Idk maintaining the PG vector extensions has been kind of a pain in the ass, at least from an automation perspective

Huh? What are you maintaining? The PostgreSQL db and extensions are provided in the container image. You do not have to use your own external PostgreSQL.

Of course, you may have reasons to do that. But then you also own the maintenance.

I have never had to maintain any PG extensions. Whatever they put in the image, I just run. And so far it has just worked. Upgrades are frequent and nothing has broken on upgrade - yet at least

I never had to meddle with that

There is an Android app, too.

Couldnt Immich be used by a paid service provider to provide Immich google-free photo hosting ?

I am pretty sure they already offer that service for a price.

Every time I go the self hosting route, everything goes smoothly for awhile, and then decides to break 6 months down the line, and I have to waste a Saturday figuring it all out and upgrading things. Not what I want to do with my weekend, when I'm already doing software dev and maintenance for work. This happens even for super dependable, well written self hosted software.

On the other hand, maybe AI can help remove some of that pain for me now. Just have Claude figure out what's wrong. (Until it decides to hallucinate something, and makes things worse)

> Move to Shopify and LearnWorlds.

Having seen a lot of companies and startups doinge exactly that, more of less everyone regrets it. Either you end up with such a lot of traffic through these vendors that you'll regret it financially, or you want to change some specific part of your page or your purchase process, which Shopify doesn't let you change, and you'll end up needing to switch or be sad, or, as I regularly have to (because we don't get the resources and time to switch): try to manipulate the site through some weird hacky Javascript snippets that manipulate the DOM after it loaded.

It's literally always the same. They get you running in no time, and in no time you're locked into their ecosystem: No customization if they don't want it; pricing won't scale and just randomly changes without any justification; if you do something they don't like they'll just shut you down.

> Stop self hosting.

Worst mantra of the century. Leading to huge dependencies, vendor lock ins, monopolies, price gauging. This is only a good idea for a prototype, and only as long as you'll not gonna run the prototype indefinitely but will eventually replace it. And maybe for one-person-companies who just want to get going and don't have resources for this.

If you need 73 plugins for wordpress, then Wordpress is a poor technology choice for your usecase.

disagree. as the sister comment mentions, wordpress may have been the wrong choice, but self hosting is never wrong, especially for a non profit who may not have the resources to deal with a situation if a hosting service decides to shut them out.

Of course it’s sometimes the wrong choice. Not everyone should self-host their own DNS and other things if their needs are already meet.

If they don't have the resources to switch to a different hosting provider, why do you assume they will have the resources to fix things when their self-host solution shits the bed?

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Switching the ecosystem from something like Shopify to some other shop software requires a lot of manual work, and some of the stuff won't even be transferable 1:1.

Fixing some issue with your WordPress installation will require a person who can google and knows a little stuff about webservers, and maybe containers, and will usually go pretty fast, as WordPress is open source and runs almost half the internet, and almost every problem that will come up will have been solved in some StackOverflow thread or GitHub issue.

Usually though, if you run WordPress and you're not doing a lot of hacky stuff, you will not encounter problems. Vendors shutting you down, increasing their pricing, or shutting down vital features in their software, happens regularly though. And if it happens, shit hits the fan.

Netflix was the STREAMING platform - it was not really making content until the House of Cards went supernova.

This is true consolidation and monopolization - regardless of the "narrative" in whichever news you happen to consume.

There should be never any talk about "Shareholder Value". Shareholders do not create content, they do not subscribe at scale. Once your customer is no longer the focus, it's downhill from there, and it's been downhill for a WHILE.

I killed my Netflix sub over a year ago and I never even think about it. It's all dull, empty-calorie background TV.

The sad part is how the iconic HBO brand, already beaten by WBD into a pulp, is just going to merge with this average-ness and fade. End of an era, indeed.

The problem with H1B is that these people are effectively prisoners. The market is not so hot right now even for those who have leverage, but combine it with the visa system and you get this "gotta do the needful" attitude to please the bosses, rushing broken fixes to production.

I see this directly on my team. The h1bs get bullied by their boss (it's a split team, I work with him but don't report to him) and they don't say anything because he could effectively have them deported. At least 2 of them have kids here and perhaps the others do. So not only does it incentivize the bully to do it, but it traps them to just take it for their family. I openly talk shit back to him because he can't deport me.

"Loft for rent, 50,000 sq ft in a new datacenter, roof access, superb wiring and air conditioning, direct access to fiber backbone."

Never worn.

We already live in that world.

And, lucky us, their "pet" causes include mass deportation, crackdowns on opposition, and building God.

The fate of OpenAI is effectively sealed - it will go bankrupt and the scraps will get absorbed by Microsoft, for further enshitification. Not necessarily the "end" of AI, but enjoy your account while it's useful.

The problem is, there is a whole ecosystem of businesses operating as OpenAI API wrappers, and those are gonna get screeeeewed.

They will just have to change of LLM provider.

If it’s like every other Microsoft acquisition since skype, they’ll certainly leave the API endpoints alone, and occasionally shave a nine and bump the price. (Like github)

People now come up with "cool" names, then the actual products/libraries. This is why I ignore most of them.

It's like a Meta interview - it's not "can you program", it's "can you make AI to program for you?". Basically, an AI operator.

Is it really so crazy to extend democracy to the enterprise?

I think so. People will behave in the guardrails they are provided. If we have a problem with those rails, then in the US at least, democracy is (ostensibly maybe) the tool to make them more aligned with what we want.

Absolutely, unless we're going to start jailing tons of executives from tons of companies.

Sounds good to me

I think we just need to get rid of corporate personhood. If you want to do something big, you need to have skin in the game. Criminal prosecution for corporate action taken under your purview should be more common. If you can't handle the heat, just come watch TV with the rest of us plebs.

Yeah, corporate personhood feels very much like the kinds of "elegant" hacks people like to use, like "who needs dropbox when FTP works fine". It's not a good match for the problem domain, but it's been stretched to fit. The unintended consequences are things we're battling to this day.