Skylark is a service we're working on to provide a private personal cloud without the hassle of running your own hardware or using a multitude of services to get the same result. With Skylark, "your digital nest" is an isolated VM that hosts your calendars, contacts, email accounts, websites and much more, all at an affordable price and under respectful conditions for your privacy. Use our admin panel, with new features coming all the time, or your favourite third-party clients.
Happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the service or the software stack!
It runs on RPi while it is in Alpha, but part of the cost of the funding campaign is to extend support to more powerful single-board computers as well as full-size x86/64 machines.
In a nutshell, yes -- it's an easy way to install/configure server applications to self-host on your own hardware, without having to use the command line or obtuse webmins.
Just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of your magazine and your podcast. Always entertaining, fresh and engaging, and I hope your newest venture keeps that same edge. I wish you guys the best of luck.
There are steps taken to address security and stability concerns. See my other commends on this item. Also you may need to look beyond just the front page - can't put everything we want to do and plan to do on the front page at once. :)
Several ways - arkOS already has a tool (https://github.com/jacook/logrunner) for buffering logs in RAM before they are written to disk, thus reducing probably the top cause for SD card wear on webserver Pis. Its RAM footprint is lightweight, and it makes a huge difference over time. Secondly, with a successful crowdfund campaign the project will be able to install both to SD card AND to a USB-connected drive. Meaning that boot gets written to SD and data is stored on an external device, something more hardy than a cheap SD card. :) Finally, backup services (plural because there will be a couple different options for people to choose from) will be made a part of the core framework, making regular backups easy and data loss less of a nightmare.
With a powered USB drive it would be a nice setup!
But I feel that Drydock and arkOS CONNECT do not fit your model. Setting up central backup and a VPN for your Pi is essentially just another service. The point of this was to get rid of the middleman, yet you conveniently introduce yourself as one?
I totally understand the impression. But the goal with arkOS is to help people securely self-host with as much stability as possible. Since self-hosting is a complex and occasionally troublesome thing, some people may need help in getting properly connected. So the only reason we consider hosting those services is to help with these ends. If someone needs the services in order to self-host, I think it is better that they use them, rather than not being able to self-host at all. Any services will be 100% optional and up to the end user.
There will be a tool that will help with dynamic DNS and port proxying for certain services (this may be against your ToS though). Or you will be able to use arkOS on a VPS too, if hosting at home is not a match for you.
arkOS will provide three of those four things. (Obviously not the data centers part). The privacy implications counter the need for data centers for interested users, but of course everyone will need to evaluate their own individual pros and cons.
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