Today I decided to install SearxNG, just to for $h1ts and giggles, and to avoid a little bit of tracking by those creeps at Google and Bing.
I started wit a clean Debian 12 LXC container on my Proxmox server and used the installation script route. I just needed to:
- Create a non-root user . DO NOT call this user searxng, this is the user the install script creates for you, if it already exists, the script will fail
- Add this user to the the sudo group
- Install sudo, git and curl
- Clone the install repo
- Run the install script
- Run the nginx setup script
That’s it. The search page will be available in http://<ip-address>/searxng
So how are the results from searches?
Not bad. Better than Google alone, for sure.
Searxng is great ! I totally ditched and blocked all google’s DNS/api requests and while the search results are okayish, It isn’t as good as google search engine.
Sometimes I get the exact same link from the previous page, sometimes twice and the results aren’t as precise as google’s engine. But that’s a trade I’m willing to take when degoogling !
Also, the docker-container/compose version needs sometimes some inter-docker intervention. If you’re not tech-savy and have no idea of python scripts and how to exec into containers, this can sometimes create some frustration, when all engines are raising errors !
Thankfully, if you’re not a selfhoster enthusiast, there are plenty of public instances !
It’s probably the most important selfhosted service in my stack :) !
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