What has been missing for self-sovereign computing to take off is now being developed: new types of open-source, free, and permissionless operating systems that are vastly more accessible than Linux or Ubuntu. They come in the form of plug-and-play services and represent one-stop shops for all sorts of self-hosted computer applications. At the click of a button, these new personal servers can be bootstrapped while being smoothly operated through a convenient, customer-friendly user interface. As a consequence, computing is shifting from rooms full of servers — commonly called data centers — owned by corporations, to personal servers run at home and owned by regular individuals.

I have been testing the two most prominent personal server solutions currently on the market: Umbrel and Start9. Both of these projects offer a plug-and-play operating system for personal servers. Behind Umbrel is a company with the same name while Start9 is the company behind the Embassy. Also common to both projects is the fact that they have each raised capital from investors who value privacy as well as self-sovereignty.

While there are differences between Umbrel and Start9, in the grand scheme of things, these two competitors work towards the common goal of making personal servers as widely accepted and used as possible. Because they both offer convenient solutions that are simple to use, the odds to achieve this goal have never been better.

Both Umbrel and Start9’s Embassy come with a Bitcoin node as well as a Lightning node integrated. This way, popular Bitcoin wallets can easily be paired with either of these nodes. Also, software services like BTCPay Server, Ride The Lightning, ThunderHub or Sphinx Chat can be run on both devices.