Show HN: arkOS - Securely self-hosting your data
I've been quietly working on this project for awhile now, but with all of the news about NSA in recent days, I thought it important to share a little about my project.<p>I am working on a platform called arkOS. arkOS is an operating system that is initially designed to run on the Raspberry Pi, and will eventually be expanded to other architectures. It comes with a built-in graphical server management system called Genesis, which will allow users to <i>easily</i> and <i>securely</i> host websites, webapps (Wordpress/Drupal), email accounts, cloud services like ownCloud, Dropbox clones and anything else. The coolest part of Genesis is that it uses a plugin interface, so anyone who has a new project that they want to manage only needs to whip up a quick script in Python and it can be easily integrated into the rest of the application. Genesis was initially a fork of another server management app called Ajenti, but now extends its features and takes it in a more comprehensive direction.<p>arkOS is similar to two other projects that have been in the spotlight lately - FreedomBox and Space Monkey. It differs from FreedomBox because it is not focused on redoing existing networking systems. It is simply dedicated to hosting your data and does not try to reinvent the wheel. It also puts a premium on user experience - it is designed to require as little command-line work as possible in order to maintain it (ideally zero). It differs from Space Monkey because it allows you to actually <i>serve</i> the content you put onto it, rather than just serving as a media storage system. While both of these tools are very exciting and important steps to "liberating" the cloud, I believe that arkOS fills an important niche in between the two.<p>EDIT: Regarding how it can prevent against gov't/corporate spying like with PRISM: The idea is that it would provide an easy alternative to the services that are provided by these large companies, i.e. Google Talk (or whatever they call it nowadays) replaced with an XMPP server, Gmail replaced with self-hosted email, Dropbox replaced by your own self-hosted instance of ownCloud, etc. The only part of PRISM that it might not provide a defence against would be big social networks (Facebook et al), but you would still be able to host your own StatusNet instance or Tent server on your arkOS server and have alternatives that way. When services can be decentralized and brought back under individual user control, a "direct link" into major web company's servers is definitely made irrelevant.<p>If anyone is interested in this project or would like to stay apprised on its status, I encourage you to check out the links below. I have many more things in the works for arkOS, including a system that helps people get around port blocking and dynamic DNS issues, something that prevents a large number of people from self-hosting their data.<p>Thanks for reading :)<p>--<p>Free The Cloud: <a href="https://ark-os.org/cloud" rel="nofollow">https://ark-os.org/cloud</a><p>Project Website: <a href="https://ark-os.org" rel="nofollow">https://ark-os.org</a><p>Github repo for Genesis, the server management GUI: <a href="https://github.com/cznweb/genesis" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cznweb/genesis</a>