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Cockpit gave my headless server a face without giving it an entire desktop environment
My headless server needed a dashboard, and Cockpit gave it one without bloating everything
5 Docker containers replaced my most expensive subscriptions
I cut the clutter from my monthly software bill with Docker.
My homelab had a dead container for 64 days, and the popular monitoring tools wouldn't have caught it
And even when I found it, the container wasn't really the problem
6 Docker containers helped me reduce dependency on Google eco-system
My Google dependency got smaller after I discovered these self-hosted alternatives.
3 household items I no longer buy from Amazon because 3D-printing them takes 40 minutes
My 3D printer replaced these 3 Amazon purchases, and the economics are embarrassingly obvious
I replaced my DIY Home Assistant setup with UGREEN's all-in-one hub, and the tradeoffs surprised me
The UGREEN HomeAgent HA100 serves a pretty fundamental purpose
Running Docker through WSL instead of Docker Desktop cut my resource usage in half, but there's a catch
Skipping the GUI cut my idle overhead.
I 3D-printed my entire home lab's cable management, and it cost me less than $25
I ditched expensive cable management for 3D-printed clips, and my lab finally looks organized
Nothing in my home lab runs on bare metal anymore, and rebuilding it has never been less painful
There's a time and a place for bare metal, but most services are just better under a hypervisor
Old GPUs work perfectly in headless home servers once you stop treating them like gaming cards
Cards built for gaming can be excellent in a headless environment, you just need the right tweaks
A $15 card pulled out of a decommissioned server is still the cheapest way to get 10GbE at home
Enterprise hardware at home is one of the best hacks in home labbing
My home server runs on a 10-year-old PC, and it still does everything I need
This system was collecting dust until I put it to good use as the foundation for my home server
4 backup tools that finally made self-hosting feel manageable
Your self-hosted stack deserves better than a backup plan built on hope.
I used my spare PCIe lanes for two used enterprise drives, and it became my cheapest storage upgrade yet
My two SAS drives that run off of an HBA card ended up being an excellent value
I built a single dashboard for every service in my house, and now nobody needs to know what an IP address is
You can customize your homepage as needed.
This self-hosted network scanner does one thing brilliantly — it tracks every device on your LAN without the bloat
This could be the Ronseal of network scanners.
A 3D printer replaced my hardware store trips for five household items that actually matter
The best part? I can fully customize these prints to my liking
My failed 3D-printed dragon taught me more than any Benchy ever could
I started paying more attention to first layers, adhesion, and slicer settings after failing to print an articulated dragon
Your Docker Compose file is probably exposing services that should stay internal
A working Docker setup can still expose more than necessary, and I learned that the hard way.
I stripped my old office PC down to one job, and it killed three monthly subscriptions
The PC does less now. That's exactly why it's worth more.
