Ever since I stepped foot in the world of self-hosting, Docker has been a constant companion that lets me deploy a bunch of containers to test things out in my home lab. There are several advantages to hosting services on your local server – especially if you’re a student. You can use free alternatives to paid services, say goodbye to subscription fees, and more importantly – store all your files and data locally on your machine, instead of uploading them to cloud servers. While these are generic upsides to deploying services via Docker, there are some specific containers that can help students in several ways.
Most of these apps can improve workflows, help increase productivity, and make a student’s life easier at university. They are easy to deploy, require no prior knowledge or experience of coding, and can be deployed on any machine. Whether you have an old laptop lying around that you want to repurpose, or a Raspberry Pi from an older project – you can use them all. I’ve made sure to include containers that students pursuing any course can utilize.
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Jupyter Notebook
For all the engineers out there
If you’re pursuing a degree in engineering – especially IT or anything to do with programming, AI, or Machine Learning – this is for you. Jupyter Notebook lets students create and share documents containing live code, visualizations, etc. The best part is that it supports several popular programming languages, such as Python, R, Julia, etc., so you’re not restricted in that sense.
Whether you’re writing a piece of software or analyzing data, Jupyter Notebook can aid you with all of those tasks. A big advantage of a self-hosted solution like this is data privacy and the lack of a recurring fee. It’s also accessible offline, which is beneficial for students in areas with patchy networks. The way Jupyter Notebook works is that it combines code and visualizations in one place, making it easy for students to understand complex concepts. Notebooks can also be exported to popular formats to be shared with peers. It even integrates with Microsoft Excel for supercharged productivity!
4
Kanboard
Organize your academics
One of the biggest challenges students face is managing time. With multiple courses, internships, extracurricular activities, assignments, and projects, and, of course, some personal time — juggling all of this can get difficult — especially without a solid plan. A kanban-style board can help in this regard by letting you create actionable tasks for your daily activities. Create individual cards for each task, like Physics Assignment, Math Homework, Python Course, etc. Set deadlines for them, and when done, move the cards to the completed section. This will help you get an overview of your tasks and dedicate time accordingly.
If you’re wondering where you can create and track these tasks — use Kanboard. If you’ve used Trello before, Kanboard is similar, but better. It has a simple UI, it’s completely free to use, and you can collaborate with multiple users — a feature that’s useful when you’re working with your peers on projects and assignments. Once you organize your academics using Kanboard, you will automatically see that your productivity has improved, and you’re more accountable.
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Nextcloud
Your personal storage and collaboration solution
Most students use Google Drive to store and share files with peers. While that’s totally fine, there are two main flaws with Drive that may deter students from using it. For starters, the free version of Google Workspace only includes 15 GB of storage. Let’s be honest — that’s just not sufficient for most people in today’s day and age. If you want more storage, you will have to pay a subscription fee and upgrade to the next tier. Then, there’s the dicey privacy situation, since your data is being uploaded to Google’s servers.
Nextcloud solves both these problems by letting you store files on your local server. You can then access these files from wherever you are. Apart from the fact that your files never leave your device, you won’t even have to pay a penny. Of course, you may need external drives to increase your local storage. But that’s a one-time expense. Apart from storing files, Nextcloud also offers a productivity suite that can replace Microsoft 365 or Google Docs. This makes it a must-have for students — regardless of the course they’re pursuing.
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Paperless-ngx
Digitize your notes
Students who take physical notes either in a notebook or on an iPad — Paperless-ngx is an absolute no-brainer. It’s essentially an aggregator tool that lets you store all your notes in one place. But that’s not all. It uses OCR and ML to convert all your notes to a digital form. This way, you can search for your notes — something you can’t do with physical notes.
You can even go one step further by integrating Paperless-ngx with a local LLM. While being able to search for your notes is already a big plus, additional features include segregating your notes into different categories, tagging them, etc. It’s almost like this service was designed specifically for students!
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Kiwix
Webpages accessible from anywhere
Imagine if you had access to any online resource at any time, irrespective of whether you were connected to the internet or not? That’s exactly what Kiwix provides. It’s a knowledge aggregator that lets you store offline versions of online resources. This is extremely handy for students who don’t have access to the internet at all times.
You can access every single page on Wikipedia offline, or quickly refer to the Python handbook for the right syntax. It’s like your personal library that can be accessed anytime, from anywhere.
Create your digital playground
The key to familiarizing yourself with Docker is playing around with the app and experimenting with different containers. There are some commands that beginners can learn after which they can deploy most containers with ease. Using Docker to self-host services is also a good way for students to learn about networking, servers, security, etc. Moreover, all the apps mentioned above provide a good mix of categories to experiment with. For instance, Nextcloud replaces OneDrive or Google Drive – or any other popular cloud service. Similarly, Kanboard is a good Trello alternative for planning your schedule. Hosting these services can also save you a fair bit of money.