[mtbkvc]

This makes perfect sense, especially on some minimal arch install with a tiling window manager. This way you can delegate most of the GUI stuff to the browser and have less stuff installed locally. Nextcloud is also something that can be hosted locally, it can help with calendar, image gallery, contact management, e-mails etc.

[papruapap]

disagree, he doesnt explain how he backups stuff but I guess it is a on external server (otherwise he will lose everything in case the laptop is lost). If you are using an external server you might as well setup everything there (ideally a raspi/minipc). I have a lot of devices (tablet, mobile, laptop, desktop and home media) and being able to use all services from all devices is pretty convenient.

[andrewaylett]

Using a service like rsync.net (happy customer here!) gives secure and safe backups but without the ability to run services. Which also means pretty much no matter how much I mess up, I can't expose my data to the Internet at large by mistake.

I will (and do) run Internet-facing services, but I can definitely empathise with the desire not to. And I'll only do it myself if the benefit over keeping it private outweighs the risk.

[jo-m]

(author) I backup my stuff to three different USB hard drives in three distinct locations, plus rsync.net. All via borg. This works well, is cheap, and a lot would have to happen for me to lose all the data.

Of course this self-hosting approach does not work if you have many machines, but I have just my Laptop plus my phone.

[bshipp]

rclone is pretty trivial to setup as well. I use it for backing up to my Google drive.