Eilean: Self-hosted digital islands

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Our digital lives are increasingly fragmented across numerous centralised online services. This model concentrates power, leaving us with minimal technical control over our personal data and online identities. The long-term permanence of these platforms is uncertain, and their commercial incentives are often misaligned with user interests. We propose inverting this model: instead of centralising our data in proprietary silos, let’s centralise our presence under our own control using open, federated services. We introduce the concept of ‘digital islands’, or Eileans – self-hosted hubs for an individual’s or community’s online presence. By hosting services ourselves, we regain autonomy and control. Eilean is a project designed to simplify the creation and management of these digital islands. The core idea is to parameterise a complete operating system deployment by a domain name and a desired set of services. This allows users to easily deploy their own instances of federated services like Matrix, Mastodon, and E-Mail. We utilise NixOS to enable declarative, reproducible configuration and deployment of these services. This provides strong guarantees about the system’s state.