Hello,
I installed Casaos with no real knowledge of homelabs, docker and self hosting about a month ago, and i had a ton of problems since then, and started wondering why even use casaos in the first place.
As I see it, it’s just a good looking dashboard with an app store that doesn’t really help, with a docker app system that lacks important features like custom networking, and a good looking file explorer that is not useful, and for the past month I asked myself a tons of times what is the actual benefit of using casaos. It’s custom docker management made me wonder if you should stay on it or use portainer, which actually seems better, but i don’t want to install a docker management app on a system that already has one, it seems odd to me, and the custom /DATA folder made me make so many errors when setting up arr* that i wonder why it’s even there. My point is, even if it feels easy at start, it will just make you not learn the right way because most users will need features that aren’t there, and learn all over again. The only thing that seems really good and that i didn’t find on other dashboards is a ssh terminal that is really useful, but as i see it, Casaos is really close to be a really good dashboard for beginners and a little more advanced users, and it’s so close that it makes it hard to decide wether sticking to it is a good idea or not. For example with a nextcloud install, you then need to setup a MariaDB install if you want to have a good setup, and things immediately get a lot more complicated than when you just clicked on a button to install nextcloud. Maybe casaos needs apps “stacks” where everything is already configured. So, maybe casaos can and will become better, but at this moment i really don’t know what to do, i still have errors not finished, and maybe a clean install into something like homarr would be better.
And, can someone for once explain what is this custom /DATA folder for ? it caused me so much trouble, i don’t want anyone to experience it. I mean, why not use basic linux folders ? And for example, am i then supposed to setup my *arr apps for hardlinks on the downloads folder and the medias folder or elsewhere ? cause elsewhere is so counter intuitive, and the medias and downloads folders had been a mess for me.
And can this be finally answered, i found nothing : Should you, for the moment as casaos lacks a lot of features, Install and use Portainer instead of the Casaos sytem, or just leave Casaos when you encounter such dilemna ?
Anyway, I just wanted to share my Casaos experience as a real self hosting newbie, because the learning with casaos has not been easy for me.
Have a good day !
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I was thinking about giving CasaOS a try but i think i might just stick with bare metal Ubuntu server with Docker/Docker Compose after reading your complaint. Hell even Portainer bugs me so i guess i cant imagine CasaOS now.
Like others have said, it’s just an attempt to make selfhosting some things prettier and more user friendly while also giving you a system you could daily drive.
Honestly if you’re even a little bit familiar with Linux, I would say just install Proxmox instead. It’s such a good tool that will make experimenting and learning so much easier. If you still need docker then install portainer in an LXC or VM and off you go
My point of vue is CasaOS / Unraid / Umbrel / … serve a good “first base” with selfhosting. Kind of like a gateway drug: gives you the candy to see how nice it could be but really under the hood, they are lacking a lot of substance.
I would never advise someone to limit their experience to those tools thought, as they lack so many things that are required for a proper long term selfhosting setup (monitoring, backups, encryptions, reverse-proxy, etc…). It’s a decent start thought.
Finally one criticism I could make is, unlike what you often read, I think it’s ok to abstract things. But the issue is, if you’re going to abstract away Docker completely you better make sure to offer everything the user needs to deal with their apps, and as far as I can tell, not only it’s not the case, but also those tools kind of tend to be opiniated in questionable ways. I have never used CasaOS thought, so it’s only 3rd party observation
Casaos is new. It is pretty similar to portainer. It is still a pretty frontend for debian targeted twards tinkerers.
The end goal is for ZimaOS to replace/supliment CasaOS which is intended to be a more direct competitor to Synology/QNAP software. ZimaOS will be the OS released on their ZimaCube Kickstarter
As others have mentioned there are competitors like Cosmos-server and Umbrel. CasaOS/ZimaOS has a pretty strong company behind it, so the chances it gets abandoned are low. Cosmos and Umbrel are more of a hobby of a few people that may or may not be around 5 years from now.
Thanks for your answer, and for mentionning ZimaOS that i didn’t know, I’ll try to submit my issues to casaos’s github so maybe they get fixed one day, because I actually really believe this could become really great.
I’ve looked at a couple of these type things (including Portainer and CosmosOS) and they just add another level of complexity. https://github.com/louislam/dockge looks to be a lot simpler and allows you to use commands that everyone is familiar with.
I installed it because I was curious, and still learning some things about Docker.
I pretty quickly used it to install portrainer, and I’ve since managed everything from there.
The file manager is moderately handy, but nothing I couldn’t do either with the command line or another filemanager tool I’d install through Docker itself.
I still have it set up because I have no need to change it, but I wouldn’t use it if I were doing my setup from scratch.
I’m kind of curious about Cosmos as what seems like a more comprehensive alternative, but I’m pretty happy with how I have some of its other functions (like reverse proxy) set up now, so if I try it, it’ll probably just be to tinker.
I really like casaos because of how all-in-one it is. Copy one script into a new Ubuntu server install and everything is ready to go in minutes. It makes for a good all in one server for people with little Linux/docker knowledge, but also allows you to do whatever you want with the OS or docker. The biggest downside right now is lack of RAID support, but ZimaOS which is kind of like a fork of casaos, will be adding it soon.
For me, a good intuitive, but also powerful gui like Casaos is great since I’m new to docker but want to utilize it now.
Also, I may set and forget my server stuff for months at a time, so when I get back to it I don’t want to have to remember certain Linux commands, I can more quickly refamilarize myself with the GUI.
its just a L7 or UI for docker instances and making selfhosting much easier.
you can do this all in the console if you want. casaos just makes installing apps much easier.
I find it useful as a dashboard for things for my wife. I have links to my switches, firewall, and nas added. Keeps things tidy and simple.
Hi OP, maintainer of Homarr here 👋. I’m pretty sure that our tool isn’t a 1:1 replacement for what you’re searching for. We do not have a widget for SSH nor an app store. If that’s what you’re looking for the suggestions above will probably do better in your case. But Homarr is still a nice to have to organise your selfhosted applications regardless. Just let me know if you have any questions regarding it or need assistance.
I’ve been using casaos for a few months now, but there are zero problems. I just package apps I need in a custom repo, mostly use it for the nice ui
I started using CasaOS because I did not know ANYTHING about self-hosting and docker, and it really helped a lot.
It was also great to learn about docker and services bit by bit, while giving me the opportunity to have a funcioning system since day 1.Honestly, I loved it.
Of course, if you know your way around docker from the start, it is probably useless for you.
And I have to admit that now that I know a bit or two, it’s starting becoming an obstacle on the way of abandoning it. But we’ll see.I too learnt docker with casa, but in my case I think it made me learn slower. I think that if I learnt docker on cli or portainer only, i would have understood more quickly all the things docker. But i really agree with you about the day 1 functioning system, it’s what makes great for beginners I think.