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Free software, self-hosted services, homelabs and home networks: taking back control of your data with open tools.

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Automatic UPS shutdown: setting up NUT in the homelabOpenTofu and Terraform in the homelab: virtual machines as codeProxmox VE: installation and a well-reasoned first setupTemplates and cloud-init: creating virtual machines in secondsCLA and DCO: what you sign when you contribute to a projectFunding an open source project: donations, sponsors, servicesOpen source license compatibility: combining different codeHandling vulnerabilities in an open source projectBackup Internet at home: 4G or 5G failover with a dual-WAN routerNetwork loops at home: why one extra cable stops everything, and STPWhere to place your router at home: walls, height and obstaclesTrusted certificates for internal-only services with DNS challengeKiwix: Wikipedia and other offline libraries on your home serverBacking up home services with restic: encrypted and deduplicatedAutomatic UPS shutdown: setting up NUT in the homelabOpenTofu and Terraform in the homelab: virtual machines as codeProxmox VE: installation and a well-reasoned first setupTemplates and cloud-init: creating virtual machines in secondsCLA and DCO: what you sign when you contribute to a projectFunding an open source project: donations, sponsors, servicesOpen source license compatibility: combining different codeHandling vulnerabilities in an open source projectBackup Internet at home: 4G or 5G failover with a dual-WAN routerNetwork loops at home: why one extra cable stops everything, and STPWhere to place your router at home: walls, height and obstaclesTrusted certificates for internal-only services with DNS challengeKiwix: Wikipedia and other offline libraries on your home serverBacking up home services with restic: encrypted and deduplicated

Topics

Free software, self-hosted services, homelabs and home networks: taking back control of your data with open tools.

⑂

Open source

Licences, development models, governance, sustainability and how to contribute.

25 articles →
⌂

Self-hosting

Cloud storage, photos, notes and media servers hosted at home, kept updated and safely exposed.

25 articles →
▤

Homelab

Second-hand hardware, virtualisation, containers, NAS, UPS, power use and monitoring.

25 articles →
⌘

Home networks

Routers, Wi-Fi and mesh, VLANs, local DNS, VPNs, cabling and diagnosing slowdowns.

25 articles →

Featured articles

⑂ Open source

AGPL: the copyleft designed for software offered over a network

Why the AGPL exists, what it requires from anyone running a web service on modified code, and how to handle it in a company without surprises.

4 min read →
⌂ Self-hosting

Audiobookshelf: audiobooks and podcasts on your own server

Hosting audiobooks and podcasts with Audiobookshelf: folder structure, metadata and chapters, synced progress, podcast downloads and apps for your phone.

4 min read →
▤ Homelab

Automatic UPS shutdown: setting up NUT in the homelab

How to use Network UPS Tools to shut down servers, NAS units and VMs cleanly in a power cut: driver, server, clients, thresholds and a real test.

4 min read →
⌘ Home networks

Bufferbloat and SQM: getting rid of lag when the line is busy

Why video calls and games stutter when someone uploads or downloads files, how to measure bufferbloat and how to fix it with SQM, fq_codel and CAKE.

4 min read →
⑂ Open source

Contributing to open source without writing code

Documentation, translations, issue triage, testing releases, user support and design: the non-technical contributions open source projects need the most.

4 min read →
⌂ Self-hosting

Forgejo: a personal Git server for projects and configuration

Running Forgejo at home to host private repositories, mirror public projects, keep configuration under Git and automate tasks with Forgejo Actions.

4 min read →
▤ Homelab

Hypervisor virtual networking: Linux bridges, VLANs and bonding

How to connect VMs to the physical network: Linux bridges, VLAN-aware bridges, trunks to the switch, NIC bonding, isolated networks and Open vSwitch.

4 min read →
⌘ Home networks

Guest network and client isolation: separating visitors at home

How to set up your router's guest Wi-Fi network, what client isolation really does, passwords and QR codes, and its limits compared to real segmentation.

4 min read →
⑂ Open source

Funding an open source project: donations, sponsors, services

Donations, corporate sponsorship, support contracts, grants and bounties: how an open source project can sustain itself and the trade-offs involved.

4 min read →
⌂ Self-hosting

Mealie: the family recipe book hosted on your home server

Collecting family recipes with Mealie: importing from websites, digitising paper recipes, meal planning, shopping lists and access for the whole household.

4 min read →
▤ Homelab

Planning a homelab from your goals, not from the hardware

How to design a homelab: define what you want to learn or host, then estimate resources, budget, power use and space before buying any machine at all.

5 min read →
⌘ Home networks

Local names at home: mDNS, .local and the home.arpa domain

Reach your NAS, printers and home servers by name instead of IP: how mDNS and .local work, the router's local DNS and the reserved home.arpa domain.

4 min read →