Achieving tech independence with OpenBSD

A few months ago, I started the migration of this website from GitHub pages to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) running OpenBSD. Consider me influenced by the likes of Derek Sivers and Dave Gauer; both proponents of the secure-by-default and minimal operating system of OpenBSD (For more information on what OpenBSD is, check out the wikipedia). Let’s first start with “Why?”:

  • I chose a VPS because I don’t currently own a computer I want to run all of the time, and after reading about other folks website setups, it seems a VPS is a pragmatic choice. I can shift over other services to the VPS as well, and give my power hungry PC a break.
  • Self-hosting or going through a provider gives the user more fine-grained control over their data.
  • I get to learn more about system administration, and work with a lovely UNIX-based OS like OpenBSD.

What got me started was Tech Independence by Derek Sivers, an article walking through acquiring an OpenBSD instance through a VPS service. I followed the steps, and came out the end of the tunnel one VPS richer (and exactly $6 dollars poorer per month). Immediately, I began looking through the wealth of information available for OpenBSD: The FAQ section on their website is a gem, and the man pages are the best I have ever seen. (I have been meaning to write about how OpenBSD has re-wired my brain to look for official documentation sources first, I’ll update when I finish that.) I felt more comfortable and confident finding sources of information about OpenBSD than I have any other OS I have tried. All of that to say, it was a painless process to get up and running with my own private server.

My website is now fully hosted on this box, along with a few other small services I use, like Miniflux, and my Git repositories. What motivated the move, was the desire to be more independent from large companies, and their control over my personal data. This includes GitHub owning all of my code, Google getting all of my emails, etc. I want to be the owner of my virtual data, and I am willing to make sacrifices to be less reliant on these corporations.

I am planning on writing about this more, I have a few articles lined up that get a bit more technical. This was just the warmup.

See also

Constraints are freedom for more thoughts on how restrictions are more freeing than they may appear

References