docker-languagetool VS Dokku

LanguageTool itself is open source (basic features). I'm running it in a Docker container.

For developers who already have Docker running on their machine. I can strongly recommend running it locally with e.g. Docker Compose.

Safes effort with maintaining an installation and keeping the background process running. Plus, it also works when network connectivity drops.

https://github.com/Erikvl87/docker-languagetool/blob/master/...

Following, you can see my personal docker-compose.yml, which you can use as a reference. For a more detailed description, you can look at the image description erikvl87/languagetool.

I was already used to wiggly lines in my favorite IDE IntelliJ and really missed the spell and grammar check capabilities in other editors especially when writing something in the browser. A colleague told me that IntelliJ is using LanguageTool since I'm pretty satisfied with the analysis inside it. Therefore, I looked around on GitHub for a way of hosting my own LanguageTool server. I came across this repository and decided to give it a go and run it on my Linux server.

It's great, I've been running the self-hosted version for a few months now. I run it using a container[0] on a $10/mo Digital Ocean VPS using Dokku[1]. The main downside is that it's a bit of a memory hog, possible because it's written in Java? Otherwise, I haven't had to mess with it after the initial set up. I like that I'm not sending everything I write to another 3rd party service I don't control.

As for the plugin, it definitely catches more issues than the stock browser spellchecks. The main issue I have with it (maybe someone can point me in the right direction) is that it always tries to autodetect the language. This is fine for longer texts, but often fails on shorter strings like headlines. This leaves my words highlighted red because it thinks I'm writing bad German, or Swedish (which is fair). I haven't been able to figure out how to force it to only use US English.

[0]: https://hub.docker.com/r/erikvl87/languagetool

https://github.com/Erikvl87/docker-languagetool became my daily tool

The entire proof reading engine can be run either through their Java server or in a docker image. Java Docker Another Docker Repo

I have been using this docker version without any issues: https://github.com/Erikvl87/docker-languagetool

Would be great to see a comparison to some better known alternatives like

- Dokku [0]

- CapRover [1]

[0] https://dokku.com/

[1] https://caprover.com/

If you want to dig into it anyways, Dokku is an interesting mention. They provide an Open Source PaaS that you can install on your server to simplify self hosting containers.

When I came across Coolify, I thought of giving it a try. I am aware of Dokku, but I never really tried it because it doesn't have a UI. I work primarily as a UI developer, so having a nice UI to work with is a plus for me.

I run all my projects on Dokku. It’s a sweet spot for me between a barebones VPS with Docker Compose and something a lot more complicated like k8s. Dokku comes with a bunch of solid plugins for databases that handle backups and such. Zero downtime deploys, TLS cert management, reverse proxies, all out of the box. It’s simple enough to understand in a weekend and has been quietly maintained for many years. The only downside is it’s meant mostly for single server deployments, but I’ve never needed another server so far.

https://dokku.com/

Yeah there are a bunch of selfhostable things:

Caprover (https://caprover.com/)

Dokku (https://github.com/dokku/dokku)

But people still choose Netlify and Vercel for ease of use I think.

Maybe we need something that's just Netlify. The closest I've seen to the "right" UX is Ness:

https://ness.sh

The modern iteration of these tools has taken the developer experience learnings from the Platform as a Service (PaaS) category, and will bring them to your own VM, giving you your own personal PaaS. Example of this include Dokku, Coolify, Caprover, Cloud66 and many more!

Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options:

1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku

2) https://render.com

3) https://fly.io

4) If you have aws credits this is their heroku equivalent: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk

above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly.

All in all, I really recommend trying out Dokku if you are a developer interested in hosting your own projects. It makes it super easy to get everything you need to get up and running without having to worry about the specifics. And the price is impossible to beat!

The installation instructions are on the frontpage of our site. Thats basically all you need to do to install Dokku. As far as using it, we have a simplified tutorial here.