My friends are open to leaving Discord which has finally given me a reason to look into Element/Matrix. I found the install instructions and am immediately put off. Is this it? No official docker compose? 😞
My friends are open to leaving Discord which has finally given me a reason to look into Element/Matrix. I found the install instructions and am immediately put off. Is this it? No official docker compose? 😞
Helm is what is used for real world software deployments. It has its problems but it’s better than Docker Compose.
Out of curiosity, what makes it better?
A quick search says it’s a package manger for kubernetes. Besides plex, everything I selfhost is just for me. Would you say helm/kubernetes is worth looking into for a hobbyist who doesn’t work in the tech field?
Absolutely no. Kubernetes has it’s benefits and it can make sense to get into it for tinkering etc, but if you just want to set up matrix and not learn an entire new system, stay away from it.
I need to agree here. K8s is only for the real tech savvy people. I’d you are just starting with docker avoid k8s or k3s.
I deal with kubernetes daily for my job and it manages to melt my brain at least a few times a week. It’s not bad… it’s actually great… it’s just… a lot. Like, a lot a lot.
For what it’s worth, I do not use it at home, because I prefer to be getting paid when my brain is melting.
Kubernetes is much more complicated and powerful than Docker, and Docker Compose is more similar to the way you work directly with Kubernetes than it is to Helm, which adds in a templating system. Basically, from a Docker perspective, Helm allows you to configure your compose file, but not just by substituting variables. Helm can make structural changes such as completely adding or removing sections based on the variables used when loading the chart. The output of Helm is YAML, sort of like a compose file.
Kubernetes has a much more complicated system for describing workloads and their resources than Docker Compose, and it is extensible. For example, if you are running on AWS you can have Kubernetes attach EBS volumes to your pods, or if you’re on bare metal you might use LVM, and it’s not limited to things that Kubernetes natively understands like storage volumes: Cert Manager is a common piece of software that is deployed into Kubernetes that takes care of issuing and renewing TLS certificates for other software in Kubernetes.
I used to run Kubernetes at home with ArgoCD, but I’ve moved on to NixOS instead. NixOS is less powerful because it doesn’t have dynamic workload scheduling, but I don’t actually need dynamic workload scheduling or all the configuration necessary to facilitate dynamic workload scheduling in my house, and Nix is much nicer to work with than Helm’s gotmpl templating. Unless you like this kind of stuff or want to get into Kubernetes, you probably want to avoid it for running a few things on one host.