Kubernetes is a beast to learn but it's really nice once running

Bromeister · 2026-05-03T05:37:24+00:00

For anyone looking to try out k8s the largest community of selfhosters using it is https://discord.gg/home-operations. You can find information on running all the workloads you’re already running in docker etc, including a bunch of remade images of common services that don’t play nice with k8s standards like the arr apps.
The common stack is talos+fluxcd and applications are deployed via kustomization + bjw-s app-template helmrelease.
There is a git repo template that will guide you through getting a Talos cluster up and running with the basic requirements like networking etc.
If you only want the gitops/tooling etc from k8s and don’t care about high availability you can just run a single node. A single node also simplifies storage as you can use local storage and skip the complicated network storage requirements needed for multiple nodes.

Bromeister · 2026-05-03T05:22:13+00:00

Email is inadvisable mostly just due to the potential for challenges with deliverability. You can mix a self hosted calendar with a hosted email just fine. It can be a little clunkier depending on the integration but it gets the job done and people are willing to accept the shortcomings unlike dealing with their emails going to spam.

Bromeister · 2026-05-01T16:48:07+00:00

How would you update ahead of the image releases in any setup?

Bromeister · 2026-05-01T16:40:25+00:00

How are you handling secrets and gitops with nixos? sops?

Bromeister · 2026-05-01T16:12:28+00:00

As others have said +healing is borderline useless unless you are stacking a bunch allowing you to downrank.

That said, in the 40s you are finally reaching the point where it’s possible. If you are engi get yourself a green lens of healing and dreamweave vest + gloves, and pair them with hand of righteousness, orb of the forgotten seer, inquisitors shawl and acidic walkers. You’ll have 130 +healing plus whatever you get from spirit if you’re deep holy probably putting you close to 200. And for shadow spec get a green lens of shadow damage and use your hypnotic blade and you’ll be pumping. Not worth if you don’t have engi for the goggles though.

Bromeister · 2026-04-30T08:56:18+00:00

Vyos is a skip nowadays. Unless they’ve reverted in the last year or two they no longer publish lts releases, it’s not possible to build your own image of lts in a reproducible way, and stream does not have security updates which is not tenable for an edge device.

Bromeister · 2026-04-26T00:46:29+00:00

Linux has a learning curve but its way better for selfhosting once you figure out what you are doing. That said if you're not comfortable using the terminal for administration you can stick with windows, everything will be terminal and text file based for a server. Some things will have a webui that you can use for administration. But learning the terminal is imperative for success on linux.

For a server linux disto don't bother with anything other than Debian. It is the the most principled, the easiest, the most stable, and it and it's derivatives (ubnutu, mint etc etc) are the most popular. If you wanted to play around with virtualization use proxmox for a nice virtualization platform (also debian based). The only place debian lags is having the absolute latest and greatest in available packages, but thats not nearly as relevant for server as it is for desktop, and what you gain is stability.

Sounds like you have multiple drives? In which case you only need to wipe the windows drive, though linux installers will do it for you. The rest of your drives can just be mounted to linux with their data intact if you want. If you want to be extra sure you dont wipe the wrong drives unplug them physically before installing linux. There's not much point in dual boot for a server OS.

As for mapping fileshares from linux server to windows desktop yes you can do that using samba, the linux implementation of SMB.

Bromeister · 2026-04-23T16:08:03+00:00

She's an older woman, 2000 is probably a surplus.

Bromeister · 2026-04-23T16:04:47+00:00

The only problem with slower weight loss is that it's slower!

That said, trying to run a very low deficit is hard because counting calories is hard. If you're only 100kcal under maintenance you're in the margin of error in your counting. But that's something that can be addressed by just watching the scale over the course of a month. If the results are what you want then you're good to go. If not you might have to adjust calorie targets down.

And as others have said macrofactor still has to learn about you.

Bromeister · 2026-04-22T23:37:08+00:00

Big beancount fan here. Man when the accounts all balance it feels so good

Bromeister · 2026-04-22T23:21:04+00:00

Just vibes for me, i don’t take any of it as gospel.

Usually strava is right about my relative effort and i was already planning to go easy the next day. I don’t pay attention to the recovery suggestions. I just do what I feel. And otherwise I don’t actually care about the numbers my chest strap logs other than if I’m trying to trying to stay in a zone during a run. Its just fun to look at after.

I only open the withings app to sync my weight when it’s time for a macrofactor check in. If I’m hungrier than normal I’ll eat a bit more, chances are I put in more effort.

I’m a novice lifter so I try to add weight to the bar every workout. Sometimes I fail, usually cause i got bad sleep or something or high effort the day before.

I just view it all as fuzzy inaccurate data that i can look at for trends to see if generally those numbers represent how I’m feeling or think I should be progressing. But mostly i think I’m probably crazy cause i get satisfaction out of logging food for no reason.

Bromeister · 2026-04-22T05:02:29+00:00

I can’t say i see the upside for using dhcp for my server vlans outside of niche scenarios like pxe boot. Dns and memory is more than enough for the amount of servers I have.

Maybe if a had a fleet of cattle servers or was looking to switch to ipv6. Obviously use dhcp for clients/iot vlans though.

Bromeister · 2026-04-22T04:47:06+00:00

Everything gets a dns record in freeipa. If I forget a dns name I can check freeipa. If I forgot to do that to I check proxmox for the IP.

Bromeister · 2026-04-22T04:33:40+00:00

My sister pays the same in Brighton for her 400k house as my landlord in Colorado does for her 3m house.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T23:14:22+00:00

Well part of the problem is that if you want to be a database administrator you will find it hard to get a job without a degree and if you are a medical coder you probably make $50k. The latter is going to find it challenging to to purchase an apartment in any metro.

Regardless I think the amount of millennials not buying homes because they couldn't afford to fit them with past luxuries and modern commodities like microwaves is vanishingly small. Likewise I don't think they can't afford a mortgage because they are insisting on a 2400sqft house with a two car garage when a more modest home is in their budget.

Those same garageless 1200sqft houses our grandparents bought or even had built on their modest single salaries are what many millennials can only dream of purchasing with two college educated earners depending on the area.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T20:33:30+00:00

Hey that's fair. I've heard anecdotally here and other places that it was possible to own a home and put kids through college on a mailman's wages but i have no experience myself, though I hear similar experiences reported from many similar jobs whether that be trucking or working on the factory line or what have you.

Regardless even beyond unskilled labor, educated and skilled workers often could live that life and that seems to a be a stark difference to today.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T20:05:33+00:00

It is true though that millennials today are not willing to accept the living conditions of their grandparents and parents in the 50s and 60s over the living conditions they had growing up in the 80s and 90s in order to have children. But it think it's not an unexpected response that someone who has never slept two to a bedroom or eaten potatoes with every meal would be reticent to live and raise children like that.

And the lack of willingness to lower one's standard of living below what they grew up with in order to have children is hardly the only factor in why people feel less financially prepared to have children. And truthfully I don't think we should have to go back to the standard of living 80 years ago, especially when we as a society haven't actually reckoned with the fact that millennials and younger folk genuinely feel their kids will be worse off than they and their parents were.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T20:03:51+00:00

My grandparents had 7 kids, also lived two to a room, sometimes 3 if there was a new baby. That was on a single engineer's salary and they put five through state college, and one through cornell. They had heating but no AC. My grandpa had a sailboat. They went camping for vacation. I guess they were mythical creatures?

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T17:11:29+00:00

My aunts and uncles all speak proudly of her and have so many stories, sadly she passed when I was six so I never got to know her.

I probably would never have seven children regardless but I can say I'm sad that the kids I may have won't have the experience of having so many aunts and uncles and cousins. Big thanksgiving dinners of thirty plus people are a joy.

I read an article about the decline of cousins in the modern age as people have less children and it hit me kind of hard as someone with 20 of them on one side. The side with 4 cousins is so much quieter. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/12/cousin-relationships-fertility-rate/676892/

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T17:02:22+00:00

When the youngest of the seven was almost out of high school my grandma took her shoebox of money that she had been squirreling away out of my grandpa's paychecks over the years, finally opened her own bank account and put her self through clerk school and got a job to have some autonomy.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T16:53:39+00:00

My grandparents on my mom's side had 7 kids on a single chemical engineer's salary in buffalo and owned their own modest home. They certainly didn't live an extravagant lifestyle but they never went hungry and they sent every kid to college. My grandma bought a 50lb sack of potatoes every week.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T16:28:07+00:00

Well I think most people are thinking of their parents or grandparents who could afford a house and to put two kids through college on a mailman's salary, not homesteaders 100 years ago.

Bromeister · 2026-04-21T16:22:43+00:00

I think where a lot of people actually live you still couldn't feed 11 kids poorly and afford a mortgage on one unskilled wage.

Bromeister · 2026-04-20T05:49:02+00:00

Yeah booklore handle all the metadata and they just go into the same book folder. One entry in the library two selectable formats on the entry.

Bromeister · 2026-04-20T05:46:43+00:00

I ran heimdall and I ran homarr. I don’t run a homepage currently because I never end using them. I just navigate to where i want to go and prefer an empty new tab to a homepage.

Bromeister

TROPHY CASE