We believe that decentralizing the Internet, and empowering people to take control and responsibility back over their own data and services, is a crucial issue to guarantee a free and democratic society.
YunoHost may be called a distribution or an operating system, but it's actually "just" a simple layer added over the top of Debian, which does most of the hard work for you.
For instance, if you wanted to install WordPress, you would need to type a bunch of commands to create some users, setup a web server, setup a SQL server, download the WordPress archive, uncompress it, configure the web server, configure the SQL database, and finally configure WordPress. YunoHost handles the technical details and "types all these commands for you", so that you can focus on what really matters.
Yes! Have a look at the [Custom Web app](https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/my_webapp_ynh). It provides an "empty shell" : after installing it, just upload your files (via SSH/SCP or SFTP) to the right location. You can have PHP and a SQL database if you need.
Yes! YunoHost is multi-user and multi-domain. Some applications like *WordPress* or *Web App Multi Custom*, are multi-instances, which means that the application can be installed many times.
The [SSO](https://github.com/Kloadut/SSOwat/) (single sign-on) cannot properly authenticate users when they access your server with only its IP. If you really can't properly configure the DNS, you can temporarily work around it by [modifying the `hosts` file (last §)](/dns_local_network) on your computer.
At the moment, YunoHost is maintained only by volunteers working in their free time. Basically no money is involved in the project (apart from server fees or stickers :P).
Yes, you can! YunoHost needs money to pay servers and domain names. We would also like contributors to be able to continue contributing rather than look for jobs elsewhere.
A common misconception for newcomers in free software projects is to think that they are "not skilled enough". In practice, nobody is "skilled" :). What really matter is: [liking what you do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIbR5TAz2xQ&t=113s), being friendly with other human beings, being patient and stubborn with machines, and having some free time. Other than that, just doing what you can is already awesome!
<p>YunoHost is aimed at non-tech people who just want their server to work. Debian has its flaws, but it's (one of?) the most widely known and used distribution for servers. It's stable. Most self-hosted software are one way or another compatible with Debian. It's easily hackable by anybody who's been doing a bit of CLI on their personal Ubuntu/Mint computer. There is no killer feature in other distributions that makes it relevant for YunoHost to switch or port to it.</p>
<p>YunoHost aims to make packaging easy. The idea from the beginning was to keep it as simple as « if you can install the app manually, then you can easily copy/paste steps into a basic install/remove package with no particular training ». This is not the case with Debian packages.</p>
<p>Turns out, YunoHost apps packaging holds a subtly different purpose than traditional packaging like .deb. Debian packages fulfill the low-level purpose of installing files, commands, programs and services on the system. It is often your duty to configure them properly, simply because there is no standard server setup. Typically, web apps requires a lot of configuration because they rely on a web server and a database (and the single sign-on).</p>
<p>YunoHost manipulates high-level abstractions (apps, domains, users...) and defines a standard setup (NGINX, Postfix, Metronome, SSOwat...) and, because of this, can handle the configuration for the user.</p>
