Expand the Flatcar Apps selection [Great for new contributors]

[John15321]

What is a “Flatcar App”?

Flatcar Apps is a loose term for an example/reference implementation showing how to use Flatcar Container Linux to run a specific service. A Flatcar App is typically published as a GitHub repository and/or documentation so others can learn from it and reuse/adapt it.

Examples:

• https://github.com/flatcar/flatcar-app-minecraft
• https://github.com/flatcar/flatcar-app-jitsi

Contributing a Flatcar App is a great way to:

• learn how to use Flatcar yourself, and
• contribute something practical back to the Flatcar community.

Call for contributions

If you already have a repo with a similar setup, please link it here. If it’s a good fit and you’re interested, it could later be moved into the flatcar GitHub org.

Ideas/suggestions are welcome too!

Below is a list of potential Flatcar Apps that people might find useful or interesting:

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Ideas: potential Flatcar Apps

Office productivity & communication

• Office suite

  • Nextcloud
  • OnlyOffice
  • LibreOffice

• Email

  • MailServer
  • IReadEmail
  • Web UI
    • SnappyMail
    • Roundcube
  • Mailing lists
    • Mailman 3
  • Mail-in-a-box style solutions
    • Mail-in-a-Box
  • References
    • docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver — https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver
    • DAVx⁵ — https://www.davx5.com/
    • Slim and Lightweight personal mailserver — https://github.com/t-lo/mailserver

• Collaboration (text)

  • Matrix
  • Rocket.Chat
  • Nextcloud Talk
  • Mattermost

• Collaboration (audio/video)

  • Rocket.Chat
  • Matrix
  • Nextcloud
  • Jitsi — https://github.com/flatcar/flatcar-app-jitsi
  • Mattermost
  • OwnCast

• Social

  • Mastodon
  • Pixelfed
  • GoToSocial

• Media

  • Jellyfin
  • Immich
  • Calibre
  • Audiobookshelf
  • FreshRSS
  • Wallabag

• Phone system

  • FUTO

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Networking & security

• VPN / remote access

  • WireGuard
  • OpenVPN
  • JumpCloud
  • Notes
    • WireGuard is easy and very useful
    • OpenVPN needs automation to be usable (UX, etc.)
    • Iodine? (cool/crazy)

• Endpoint security

  • Wazuh — https://wazuh.com/
  • OSSEC — https://www.ossec.net/

• Password management

  • Bitwarden (self-hosted) — https://bitwarden.com/self-hosted-password-manager-on-premises/
  • Psono — https://psono.com/
  • pass (The Standard Unix Password Manager)

• MFA

  • privacyIDEA — https://www.privacyidea.org/
  • Authelia — https://www.authelia.com/
  • 2FAuth — https://docs.2fauth.app/

• OAuth / directory services

  • OAuth service / Open Directory Platform — JumpCloud
  • Active Directory equivalent / Open Directory Platform — JumpCloud

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Software development

• Version control

  • GitLab
  • Gitea (spelled “GitTea” in earlier notes)

• CI/CD pipelines

  • GitLab CI
  • Gitea CI (or integrations)
  • Jenkins
  • Concourse CI — https://concourse-ci.org/
  • Self-hosted CI runners

• Artifact repositories

  • JFrog (Artifactory)
  • Sonatype Nexus
  • Pulp
  • Notes / references
    • Pulp Project? (PMC uses it)
    • Sonatype (software supply chain management)
    • JFrog

• Issue tracking & project management

  • Nextcloud
  • OpenProject — https://www.openproject.org/
  • Bugzilla
  • Taiga (open-source agile PM software)

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Knowledge management

• Wikis & documentation
  • XWiki — The Advanced Open Source Enterprise and Application Wiki (XWiki.org)
  • Wiki.js
  • Nextcloud
  • BookStack

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Notes / “app add-ons” / specifics

• Nextcloud (notes)

  • Add backups with btrfs subvolume snapshots to avoid snapshot mismatches between DB + files
    • Separate partition and volume
  • Include common/default plugins
  • SnappyMail
  • Memories (photos and videos)
  • OnlyOffice (optional)

• Mail (alternatives / notes)

  • iRedMail — Free, Open Source Mail Server Solution
  • t-lo/mailserver — Dockerised mailserver

• Chat/collab references

  • Rocket.Chat — Communications Platform You Can Fully Trust
  • Matrix — Matrix.org hosting

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Extra “company-adjacent” ideas

• Home automation

  • Home Assistant
  • Note: may require kernel modules for Zigbee etc.; system dependent; sysext?

• Home media

  • Jellyfin

• Compute / specialized workloads

  • Rendering server / graphics-modeling
    • Blender
    • Autodesk Maya
    • Autodesk 3ds Max
    • Redshift (Maxon; GPU-accelerated biased renderer)

---

Meta / platform services (cross-cutting)

• Monitoring
• Backup / restore (incl. cloud migration / instance scaling?)
• Meta services / pluggable services

[chewi]

Nice list! I've worked with a number of these. I would avoid OSSEC if you want to keep your sanity. There are probably better solutions out there these days.

One personal itch I had was Sunshine. Not because it's at all practical, running Flatcar on a machine with a beefy GPU at home or in the cloud is really not cost-effective, but it would still be fun to pull off. As well as using it for my local Windows VM solution, I got it working at home between my daughter's laptop running Sunshine on OpenSUSE and my Quartz64 board running Moonlight on Gentoo just this week. I maintain both packages on Gentoo.

[John15321]

Nice list! I've worked with a number of these. I would avoid OSSEC if you want to keep your sanity. There are probably better solutions out there these days.

One personal itch I had was Sunshine. Not because it's at all practical, running Flatcar on a machine with a beefy GPU at home or in the cloud is really not cost-effective, but it would still be fun to pull off. As well as using it for my local Windows VM solution, I got it working at home between my daughter's laptop running Sunshine on OpenSUSE and my Quartz64 board running Moonlight on Gentoo just this week. I maintain both packages on Gentoo.

Feel free to edit my issue! (I think you should be able to?) If you see something that can be added go ahead and add it :)

[tormath1]

I run a Jellyfin setup at home on Flatcar, I can see to upstream my stuffs. :)

[t-lo]

I run a Jellyfin setup at home on Flatcar, I can see to upstream my stuffs. :)

Me too!

Added "media" and "social" lists to the "Productivity" section.

[t-lo]

Jellyfin GPU support would be amazing. We'd need to enable the respective intel / AMD drivers in the kernel if we don't ship them yet.

[tormath1]

Jellyfin GPU support would be amazing. We'd need to enable the respective intel / AMD drivers in the kernel if we don't ship them yet.

@t-lo I have a PR but it was failing: flatcar/scripts#3461

[John15321]

I run a Jellyfin setup at home on Flatcar, I can see to upstream my stuffs. :)

Are you running it on Proxmox?

[nicknikolakakis]

Hi! I'd like to contribute two Flatcar Apps:

• Concourse CI: CI/CD pipeline server running on Flatcar with Docker
• Wazuh: Endpoint security/SIEM platform running on Flatcar with Docker

I'll create separate repos for each and link them here once they're ready for review.

[nicknikolakakis]

Here are the two Flatcar Apps I mentioned:

• Concourse CI: https://github.com/nicknikolakakis/flatcar-app-concourse-ci

  • Deploys Concourse web, worker, and PostgreSQL via systemd + Docker
  • Auto-generates SSH keys on first boot

• Wazuh: https://github.com/nicknikolakakis/flatcar-app-wazuh

  • Deploys Wazuh manager, indexer (OpenSearch), and dashboard via systemd + Docker
  • Auto-generates TLS certificates on first boot using wazuh-certs-generator

Both follow the Butane config pattern from flatcar-app-minecraft. Happy to take feedback or move them into the flatcar org if they're a good fit.