I’m new to Start9 and installed it on my Nuc14+. Everything is fine so far, but what I observed it the updates of the packages are not very frequent.
I installed basically the same packages as on my Umbrel. While Umbrel already had multiple updates the last weeks for Knots or AlbyHub, in Start9 I still have only the old versions.
Who is responsible for the updates? Is Alby usually updating their package for Start9 or is it Start9 team? How many ppl working on it?
Since I’m not a dev I might not be able to help updating, but if there is a easy to understand way to do updates from the original source repo on our own, I would do it.
Can you shed some light on it? And maybe give me a link for a documentation how to “wrap” a github package for Start9 on my own?
Start9 develops StartOS, which is a complete and full Linux distribution with a large number of features designed to make it easy for the average person to run a server safely and efficiently without the need to have much technical knowledge. Among the key features are:-
dependency management, where services that are installed can rely on others, with the OS telling the user what they need to do next to connect things up)
actions, properties and interface details taken out of the individual services and presented at the OS level in a consistent way so that a user wouldn’t need to know about the inner workings of the service to fix issues or run commands that would otherwise only be available via the command line for advanced users
an entire backup paradigm where backups of services can be made, or backups of the whole server can be made to USB or across network shares and then restored again.
Umbrel doesn’t really have these features, it’s just an iOS-styled overlay and individual docker containers where the raw software from the developer is run as-is. You have no backups, dependency or support with the service itself, you just hope it works out. While in such a case in take minutes just to put the app store installer to the latest build from the dev so you can run the latest version, if anything goes wrong you’re on your own.
In StartOS each service is packaged and tested specifically for StartOS, much like you’ll find software released specifically for Windows, macOS or Android. It is designed to fit the ecosystem. Development and testing takes more time, regardless of whether a particular service is maintained by the original developer, by StartOS or by both (you can check each github repo for the wrapper to find out who’s involved).
Of course, if you don’t care about any of the benefits of StartOS and these would get in your way as a technical user… you could just run Debian or Fedora…