Please excuse this Linux/Immich rant, just annoyed. Wasted so many hours trying to get Immich (Google photos replacement) up and running on a server this week... TLDR: linux and poor documentation/implementation kicks my butt, once again.

All I wanted to do was have a standalone micro PC run Immich server and that's it. Thought it was going to take 30-60 min... but no. They try and force you into using docker compose, which adds a bunch of pain. No legit docker image either, all manual terminal prompts.

First it was finding a debian distro that would install with the right dependencies to do a basic install with docker. Tried to go terminal only at first, but then it was missing all sorts of important things. A reminder to me again that you either get full featured or the barest of bare bones in Linux.

Tried NixOS but the documentation wasn't as simple as the guide said... Add two lines to the config file and you're good, suuure... (iykyk). I'm going to have to revisit this, I may just have to add more config file info in. At least installing NixOS and applications wasn't a pain... I use it as a daily driver on PC and laptop, but in this case I just wanted to run terminal and no extras.

Tried Ubuntu, but then I had to gut the built-in docker, because its not cool enough, to install the "proper" version and that ended up blowing up, so I gave up on that.

Broke down and installed FreeNAS and tried to install the community app. It installed and ran, but then doesn't stay running because of a permissions issue, even after following the guide and the error log doesn't make sense. Other people had similar issues...

I really hate docker in general and immich needs a better install solution! The docker network setup is a mess. I've tried docker on my QNAP NAS and the virtual networking is a pain for docker containers (It really shouldn't be).

Why can't I just install Immich as a standalone application on a server? Why does it have to be docker and so convoluted? 🤮

Anyone else had an luck doing a standalone installation of Immich?

🤯🔫