this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
119 points (96.9% liked)

Selfhosted

60024 readers
709 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts here are to be centered around self-hosting. Please ensure it is clear in your post how it relates to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or git here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What's happening on your servers? Any interesting news things you tried?

I didn't do anyone other than updating Mastodon (native deployment) lately due to a lack of time. Reading so much about Immich caused me to consider trying it in parallel to Nextcloud but I'm not sure if I want to have everything twice.

Not quite homelab, but I'm about to install Linux Mint on my mom's laptop and that had me thinking about creating an off-site backup in her place again since she has a fiber connection. I'm still not sure about the potential design though, but currently my only backup is in the same rack as the live stuff.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] matsdis@piefed.social 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I've set up Kavita for my e-books. Nice UI, looks promising, and I've added some books. I haven't really used it yet, because half of this was just an excuse to try podman (instead of docker). I wanted to set it up to run as unprivileged user, without the docker daemon running as root. That wasn't too hard, but it was definitely a few extra steps.

But something about Kavita didn't sit well with me. Maybe I don't self-host enough stuff to know what's normal, but there is a donate button, which I don't mind, but its tooltip says: "You can remove this button by subscribing to Kavita+."

I'm donating to a few software projects already, and I have developed a substantial amount of free software myself. There is nothing wrong with asking for money. But what I cannot stand is when software running on my own device is intentionally acting against my interests. And this tooltip was very clear about not letting me do something that I might want to do.

So I checked the source code for more. I found another anti-pattern: telemetry is opt-out instead of opt-in. But that seems to be it, I didn't find anything worse than that. So... fair I guess, if the author wants it that way. It's still free software. It looks like I could delete all the Kavita+ stuff myself and re-build. Which I'm going to do if I keep using it. But this is now an extra step that prevents me from just using it, because I need to feel in control of what I run. Kind of self-inflicted, I guess...

[–] IanM32@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 8 months ago

If you reach the point of looking for a different solution, check out Calibre Automated. I tried several different things and this was the best one for me.

[–] laggytoast@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 months ago

This looks cool, but I really wouldn't like having the donate button right in front of me

[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've been running Kavita for a year and a half +, and honestly cannot tell where the donate button is, other than going into the settings and clicking the "kavita+" selection. Maybe I'm oblivious. Can you share what you're seeing? As well with the telemetry option?

[–] matsdis@piefed.social 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Telemetry is in Server -> General -> Allow Anonymous Usage Collection. When you opt-out, it also send a final message to the server that you've opted out. The the telemetry itself looks reasonable, I don't mind sending it. It's really just the dark pattern of opt-out vs of opt-in that bothers me.

The donate button is the heart in the bottom left menu (not visible in the settings). It's unobtrusive. I wouldn't bother to remove it, except the tooltip says that I have to pay to remove it - now it has to go. Asking for donations is fine, but asking for money to remove a button is disgusting.

[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago

Thanks!

Telemetry: I was able to find it, but it was already disabled. Maybe i noticed and unchecked it when I initially setup.

Donate button: Ah, I see where you mean. Interestingly I do not see it when accessing from my mobile device, either as a mobile site or requesting a desktop site. But when accessing it from a desktop browser I do see it in the bottom left.

A quick test shows ublock origin can block the element from showing. I believe that even if the user donates, it is not sufficient to hide this button, and the user must opt to pay for Kavita+ which is a subscription, not a one time license/etc, and forgoing it may lock other features a user is interested in.

https://wiki.kavitareader.com/donating/ https://wiki.kavitareader.com/kavita+/