The dashboard is the least interesting part of ArkOS. Using extremely inexpensive hardware for a decentralized cloud is the Big Idea.

I don't see much on how these things are supposed to integrate with each other, though. If they aren't trying to solve that problem...

Anyway, Webmin has been around for eons if you need that.

Without an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard, targeted for actual users and not just sysadmins, making the "decentralized cloud" a reality isn't really possible :) The first problem to solve is making reliably self-hosting one's own data no longer rocket science. After that, interaction with other devices (meshnets, etc) may be a focus.

Agree. Setup should be as easy as entering your domain credentials or choosing DynDNS name. Set password and all your basic services (email, PIM, cloud storage, blog, photogalleries) should be activated automatically. None of those need even power of Raspberry Pi. Should run on old Android phone with 256MB RAM and 8-16GB memory card (or as much as you can afford for storage). Hmm... it should be as easy as "What to do with your old Android phone? Download this app, enter credentials, put it on eternal charging, and enjoy".

Reliable self-hosting of data is not a technical problem or a UI problem. It's a political problem. True Cryptography for the masses is Too Dangerous.

But just talking about the UI question, "intuitive, user-friendly dashboard" is absolutely not the issue when it comes to systems administration. I can tell ArkOS/Genesis is already way too far off course because there is a separate GUI interface to /etc/fstab.

I wouldn't say that it's not a technical or UI problem. But I do agree that there are also political problems. Decentralizing "the cloud" isn't just something that can be addressed by technical means. But technology plays a big part in changing the status quo.

The dashboard was forked from a prior project called Ajenti, which the fstab interface and many other parts were included from. It is being converted in stages and that is one that has not been addressed yet. So be patient, the current version is far from what a usable edition is supposed to look like. :)

Do you have any plans to help users deal with difficult topics such as DNS, static vs dynamic IP, routing/port forwarding, etc?

It's so frustrating how consumer-level ISPs seem to continue to want to evolve their service into a consume-only (a la cable TV) system.

Yes, we are currently working on a dynamic DNS/proxying service and provisioning of special subdomains for those who don't have static IPs or their own domain name. Very early stages but eventually it will be directly integrated into Genesis for as close to "one-click operation" as possible. https://github.com/cznweb/deluge

The dashboard (Genesis) will be ported to other architectures (and maybe other Linux distros too) in the future. Though the idea is that you use the dashboard for everything you need, as if it wasn't even Linux, so differences between distros matter less and less.

The dashboard is an Ajenti fork. :)