How to Install Sovereign on POP! OS Latest?

Sovereign is a powerful and comprehensive self-hosted system for personal or collaborative cloud services. It allows users to run different tools and services on their own servers instead of relying on third-party companies. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of Sovereign on POP! OS, the latest version.

Prerequisites

• An operating system based on Debian. We will use POP! OS in this tutorial.
• A dedicated server running on the hardware or virtual machine with enough resources to run the services you plan to install.
• The sudo user account with root privileges and SSH access.

Step 1 - Install Required Packages

The first step is to install the necessary packages for Sovereign to function correctly. We recommend installing these packages before proceeding to avoid any possible errors.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl git python-virtualenv python-pip -y

Step 2 - Clone Sovereign Repository

Next, execute the command below to clone the Sovereign Git repository into the user's home folder.

git clone https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign.git $HOME/sovereign

Step 3 - Change to the Sovereign Directory

After cloning the Sovereign repository, move to the latest release of the directory and start the installation process by executing the command below.

cd $HOME/sovereign && git checkout $(git describe --abbrev=0 --tags)

Step 4 - Set Up and Activate Virtual Environment

The next step is to set up and activate a virtual environment before installing the Python dependencies required for the Sovereign setup process.

virtualenv $HOME/venv/sovereign
source $HOME/venv/sovereign/bin/activate

Step 5 - Install Required Python Libraries

Once the virtual environment is activated, you should install required Python libraries and modules necessary to run Sovereign properly.

pip install -r requirements.txt

Step 6 - Modify the Configuration Files

After the dependencies are installed, you need to modify Sovereign's configuration files to customize them to your specific needs.

cp ~/sovereign/local_settings.py.example ~/sovereign/local_settings.py
nano ~/sovereign/local_settings.py

Step 7 - Install and Configure Services

Finally, you can install and configure the different services within Sovereign. For instance, run the command below to install the Mail services.

fab -H localhost mail

Conclusion

After installing and testing Sovereign, you are ready to start enjoying the freedom and versatility of self-hosted cloud services. The manual process may seem challenging initially; however, the reward of owning and hosting your data makes the effort worthwhile.