Hello self-hosters! Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a self-hosted Microsoft Visio alternative, or something at least very similar. I’m basically looking to create infrastructure diagrams for my self hosted server and apps. I already have WikiJS as a wik/documentation solution, but don’t mind migrating to something else if there are better solutions and/or integrations for diagrams
Ok I think we have a winner! Got draw.io up and running on my server, and so far it has everything I need, and the UI is perfect. Thank you for the suggestion!
It is “hosted” on your workstation. There is no need for a server-client relationship for self-hosting.
By requiring a server-client relationship, you’re making self-hosting uselessly hard to deploy and enforce a very specific design when others (P2P, file sync, etc) can solve the same problems more efficiently. For example, in my specific case, with Paperwork + Nextcloud file sync, my documents are distributed on all my workstations and always available even if offline. Another example is Syncthing which IMO fits the bill for self-hosting, but doesn’t fit your definition of self-hosted.
I getcha now. However I think it would be leading us a stray if we called everything we installed, “self hosted”, if I said I self host a game, what would you think of? More like a game server ie through the network.
Also doesn’t syncthing have a Web UI I can access through the network? Granted it’s been a while but I think I remember that.
OP wants something to be shared on the network… Managed centrally, hence they came here for advice
Yes I would count this game as self-hosted (as long as you don’t need a third-party service to start it). And yes I agree it is a pretty wide definition. But at the same time, I really think there are a lot of good reasons to not dismiss it:
I think it is the simplest form of self-hosting you can do and it is doable by anybody without much technical expertise. For people with little to no technical expertise, it’s the perfect gateway to self-hosting. All you need to start is a backup drive.
For a single person, it’s actually the approach that often makes the more sense.
And even for technical people, sometimes you just don’t want to deploy and maintain yet-another-service.
And finally, you can still access your data when you’re offline.
To be honest, when it comes to self-hosting, I can’t shake this feeling that a lot of people are dismissing desktop apps immediately just because they are not cool nor hype anymore.
Regarding Syncthing, if I’m not mistaken, the Web UI can be opened to the network (most likely for headless servers) but by default it is only reachable through the loopback.
Regarding OP, for me, it wasn’t entirely clear at first whether they wanted network access or not. They clarified it later in comments.
You should check out d2. It’s a code to diagram tool. You put some very simple coke and it draws your diagram. Quite quick and useful. Been using it for a while now.
Hmm I already have an OnlyOffice server linked to my Nextcloud, but OnlyOffice doesn’t have an equivalent application. Maybe I’ll look into changing the stack to LibreOffice
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I personally like using dot(1) (https://linux.die.net/man/1/dot) but some people are into PlantUML.
If you have used Draw.io (free) or lucidcharts (paid) you can host your own version as they are both versions of jgraph
https://github.com/jgraph/docker-drawio
Ok I think we have a winner! Got draw.io up and running on my server, and so far it has everything I need, and the UI is perfect. Thank you for the suggestion!
Thanks I’ll take a look!
Draw io gets my vote
You don’t even need Docker for draw.io: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases
true, but self hosted implies not a desktop app.
No it does not.
Self-hosted implies self-hosted. AFAIK, the end goal is being as autonomous as possible technologically-speaking. Why exclude desktop applications ?
If it cannot be reached through the network/another machine it is not really “hosted” as there is no host-client relationship. My 2c
It is “hosted” on your workstation. There is no need for a server-client relationship for self-hosting.
By requiring a server-client relationship, you’re making self-hosting uselessly hard to deploy and enforce a very specific design when others (P2P, file sync, etc) can solve the same problems more efficiently. For example, in my specific case, with Paperwork + Nextcloud file sync, my documents are distributed on all my workstations and always available even if offline. Another example is Syncthing which IMO fits the bill for self-hosting, but doesn’t fit your definition of self-hosted.
I getcha now. However I think it would be leading us a stray if we called everything we installed, “self hosted”, if I said I self host a game, what would you think of? More like a game server ie through the network.
Also doesn’t syncthing have a Web UI I can access through the network? Granted it’s been a while but I think I remember that.
OP wants something to be shared on the network… Managed centrally, hence they came here for advice
Yes I would count this game as self-hosted (as long as you don’t need a third-party service to start it). And yes I agree it is a pretty wide definition. But at the same time, I really think there are a lot of good reasons to not dismiss it:
To be honest, when it comes to self-hosting, I can’t shake this feeling that a lot of people are dismissing desktop apps immediately just because they are not cool nor hype anymore.
Regarding Syncthing, if I’m not mistaken, the Web UI can be opened to the network (most likely for headless servers) but by default it is only reachable through the loopback.
Regarding OP, for me, it wasn’t entirely clear at first whether they wanted network access or not. They clarified it later in comments.
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ChatGPT to spit out mermaid that gets rendered in many markdown renderers these days. As its code you can git version it too!
Or there is C4 diagrams from code using structurizr…
Does it need to be “hosted”?
I like both these:
yEd (https://www.yworks.com/products/yed)
Dia Diagrams (http://dia-installer.de)
I think yEd had a free version but closed source.
AFAIK, unfortunately Dia hasn’t been maintained and hasn’t got a new release for a really long time. It’s still using GTK2.
I guess it doesn’t need to be self-hosted, but it would be nice. I’ll check these out! Thanks for the suggestions!
These are fully stand alone. Downloadable. So not strictly hosted I guess?
You should check out d2. It’s a code to diagram tool. You put some very simple coke and it draws your diagram. Quite quick and useful. Been using it for a while now.
I like LibreOffice Draw for this.
Hmm I already have an OnlyOffice server linked to my Nextcloud, but OnlyOffice doesn’t have an equivalent application. Maybe I’ll look into changing the stack to LibreOffice
The correct answer is : excalidraw
Wikijs supports mermaidjs doesn’t it? It’s a very powerful markup to diagram tool
I came to suggest mermaidjs too.
Typora also supports it, it’s a great low-overhead tool overall.
cryptpad could be selfhosted and has a visio part too. You can test it here:
https://cryptpad.fr/diagram/
Ok that’s pretty cool. Thank you!