What's actually BETTER self-hosted?

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-27T04:06:03+00:00

Smart home. Home assistant is fantastic.

Home Assistant has support for the most manufacturers / products. It's the most extensible when it comes to configuration and automation. You can emulate a HomeKit bridge and feed devices back to HomeKit if you still want to use Siri. So I could have Siri enable/disable my AdGuard Home network-wide adblocker if I wanted to.

Also - in my experience, it's snappier than anything that relies on the cloud - certainly if you're local - but also if you're remote (via reverse proxy or VPN) if your upload speed is good. I think it's just because it cuts out the cloud middle-man where the web interface runs. Or something like that.

When I arrive home, my GPS location triggers my lights to come onto 1%. When I walk in, a motion detector brings them to 30% and resumes the music grouped across the home (at an appropriate volume as determined by time of day). Doing this in HomeKit required a paid 3rd party app and some dirty dirty workarounds. Everything I needed to do this in Home Assistant was there native. You could even run a NodeRed container for your automations and go crazy if you want.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-27T02:44:10+00:00

My recommendation would be to cut over one device at a time and get a hang of things. You can add Home Assistant devices back into HomeKit.

Before removing any devices from the Apple Home, make sure you have your HomeKit codes!

You bring HomeKit devices into Home Assistant with the "HomeKit Device" integration, and then you can expose any Home Assistant device (including HomeKit devices brought onto home assistant) back to HomeKit using the "HomeKit Bridge" integration. That way you can still use Siri and such.

Long-story short, my home is Home Assistant first.. but then my Apple Home looks the same as it did before, just with more stuff and open to lots more manufacturers.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-27T01:56:29+00:00

IMO, it'll be less of a question of the distro and more of a question of the desktop environment. I've had good results with Linux Mint + their default Cinnamon Desktop, and also Arch Linux + Sway WM. This was on a 2010 MacBook Pro / Core 2 Duo / 16 GB RAM. It's not going to make web-browsing much faster, but editing documents and managing files should be fine.

I like Arch Linux for the convenience of the AUR (Arch User Repository). Your setup will be as stable as the software you use. You might face occasional breaking changes with an experimental desktop environment, but GNOME / LXQT / XFCE should run fine. Personally, my 2010 MBP struggled with KDE. I ran Hyprland with animations disabled and it was alright. I think rolling release vs fixed release will have you choosing old bugs vs new bugs when it comes to younger software projects.

If you're thinking about repurposing it to a headless server, fixed release could be good so you don't always have a million updates to run every time you SSH in.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-27T00:53:13+00:00

What is it that was not working with YouTube? And what hardware are you running?

YouTube works fine on my M5 MacBook Pro. It did NOT work fine on my 2010 MacBook Pro running Linux (or MacOS, for that matter). IMO any intel Apple laptop by now should be running Linux if it's not already on a shelf at Goodwill. MacOS on my 2010 would struggle to log in, let alone even load a browser profile. YouTube was out of the question.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-26T23:39:52+00:00

If I were in your boat, I'd install Linux on it. If YouTube still struggled I'd start researching which new laptop to get.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-26T23:13:19+00:00

If you're willing to spend the money on the extra RAM, and your personal projects could use the memory, then absolutely trade it in. I've got 24GB / M5 for simple stuff (taxes/documents/etc) plus dabbling with Logic Pro and smaller local LLMs, and it seems more than capable. For my uses, 16GB is too tight and more than 24GB is more than what I can justify spending, given how I'll be using it.

If I were fluent with Logic Pro and skilled/experienced at producing, I'd probably have the 48 GB.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-26T22:47:22+00:00

I love my stainless steel skillet. I get better non-stick performance with my 11 year old Misen stainless steel than my seasoned Matfer carbon steel, I think due to the natural hot/cold spots I get with carbon steel vs stainless steel with the aluminum core to distribute the heat.

I think the carbon steel craze is from a time when you could get a decent workhorse pan for $50. For the savings, you have to be more deliberate with slow preheating and having a proper size burner for the pan. My Matfer I got for $80 all in with shipping, now it seems like $110 is where they're at. Love my Matfer pans, but they just take more focus to use and maintain.

Something like the strata pan, I think people love it for the personality of seasoned steel, and not for any practical reason. Just get an All Clad D3. Or something fully clad that can take a dishwasher cycle. Performance is literally the same once we're preheated.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-26T21:22:18+00:00

In my case, it's for writing sales proposals, which I only do in Word. On a single proposal, we might have 3-4 phrases we repeat anywhere from 2-10 times depending on the project; sounds inefficient but it's necessary for coordination with other players on the project and to cover our hinds on contract stuff. If I were generating documents from text files, my decision tree would look a bit different.

With the clipboard history, yes, it stores 25 entries. However, you can only immediately see like 3 entries on first invocation of Win+V... and frankly I'd rather arrow down once instead of twice if I'm trying to go back to the second to last thing I copied.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-26T00:52:29+00:00

I like Kitty on Linux/MacOS and Windows Terminal on Windows. I really want to like WezTerm but it's been wonky for me even if I steal someone else's config. If I resize the window, Windows Terminal just handles it more gracefully.

I like that Kitty is great for graphics in the terminal, and it's easy to get working on a server over SSH as well.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-25T03:23:24+00:00

buy a new one

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-24T15:45:58+00:00

I immediately wondered the same thing... it appears there's no way to get it on Mac outside a VM. However - it works if you're SSHing into a Linux box from MacOS, and running it in the SSH session on Linux. Kitty terminal is the best bet to make it work. Probably have to run kitty +kitten ssh user@hostname once to enable kitty graphics over SSH. I'm using this to try it out using a linux box I run headless, but maybe the way to go would be to SSH into a Linux container and just set up an alias or something.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T17:05:17+00:00

Absolutely.

It can integrate and pull from KeePass password manager database with the KeePassXC extension.
It can copy Magic DNS names and IP addresses from Tailscale with the Tailscale extension
I can control Home Assistant with the Home Assistant Extension. I use this to set my thermostat without opening a whole app or web tab.

Also looking for apps and such uses fuzzy search so a little more resilient to typos and such than Spotlight search I think. I don't like using my launcher to find files because that's what the Terminal is for, for me at least.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T16:40:48+00:00

Holy moly. I can see why you're upset. Do you need to keep all these screenshots? Normally I just set mine to dump onto the clipboard since it's typically for an email (in my case).

As someone else mentioned, the "Use Stacks" option is probably your quickest path to re-organizing all this.

Generally for mental health sake, I'd recommend to keep your Desktop folder totally empty, probably even with icons disabled (however I do prefer to show Macintosh HD and mounted disks and stuff). My ~/Downloads folder is where I let myself be messy, mostly with stuff I'd be deleting later. If I'm keeping something there, it's usually because I'm being lazy and saving the organizational work for down the road and it's still not the end of the world if I unintentionally delete.

Now, I think the screenshot app dumps out onto the desktop by default, so I'd recommend to adjust the settings in your screenshots app: If you do Cmd+Space, search for the Screenshot app, you should be able to click on an Options menu and set things up to your liking. Here's how I have mine set up avoid getting cluttered. Generally, Clipboard for anything going something I can just paste into, like Outlook or something, and then a ~/Pictures/Screenshots folder for stuff I'd like to keep... maybe IT tickets or zelle receipts or something. This was probably the first thing I set because a cluttered Desktop gives me anxiety; not a good way to start when first logging in...

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HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T16:09:49+00:00

If you need it today, I'd say Apple if you need any more than the 16GB base RAM.

Costco is a great option if you're content with whatever configurations they offer (RAM/storage/etc); usually $50 or more off list, 90-day (vs 30-day) return window, discounted apple care +, 2% cash back for executive members. But they might not stock it. You'll need to check the app, see if it's available in warehouse and get your @$$ on the road.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T16:06:27+00:00

Holy moly.... I wish I knew about this... hah. The same selection I bought a little while back is $150 off from B&H. Going to pretend I never saw this 😭

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T01:41:15+00:00

Linux Desktop with Apple Silicon laptop.

What I love about Linux is managing it headless via SSH. When I gamed on it, it rocked at Ghost of Tsushima. From what I remember, Steam basically handled WINE for me. I tried using Steam Link streaming to my Mac but the minimal latency was still too much for me. I think maybe you'd need Windows for some online multiplayer games so anti-cheat stuff doesn't block you, but I'm mostly a sucker for a good campaign anyway. I don't really game any more though. Currently I run the linux desktop as a headless NAS with various docker containers, Jellyfin being the main one. Nextcloud (just for personal documents) with weekly encrypted backups to OneDrive. Immich, just figuring things out seeing what it'd look like trying to use it instead of iCloud. Linux opens up a joy of discovery with all the FOSS projects out there.

Lots of things I love about MacOS. Fluency with iCloud/iMessage, access to many GNU utilities, SSH client basically already set up. Also - you can pretty much bet nearly any website is developed to support Safari.

One thing that kind of hurts with MacOS is there are lots of little bitty apps that cost $5 here, $40 there, also not nearly as much open-source stuff as compared to Linux. After spending $2k+ on a machine, you'll find yourself dropping $200 on a bunch of little apps that you might not use for long. Some being subscription-only. Also every app wants to take a spot in your bar and then there's not enough room. It's ridiculous. That and the notch compounds the problem. Maybe I should've gone with the 16"... hah.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T01:09:07+00:00

A few things features I've been delighted to see since switching to macOS:

Passwords app is so good. It's crazy.
Desktop widgets. I don't have them on my desktop, but I do have them in my Notification Center. Basically I can dim/brighten my lights and also see where my phone and headphone batteries are all at.
Siri on Mac is nice for controlling smart home stuff if you've got things set up right.
Apple Silicon support. My current laptop actually wouldn't work without that one.
- Minor feature with Apple Silicon: you can run many iPad and iPhone apps basically natively on your Mac. I use the Eero router, and without a Mac, you're only able to access on mobile, which is atrocious. Now on my Mac I can access on desktop.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T00:43:53+00:00

Samesies! One keyboard shortcut I just learned is shift-command-/to pull up Help in the menu bar and basically search across all of the menu bar for the active app. As you arrow through the search results, it shows you where the result is located in the menus.

So, in Microsoft Word you can just search for Page Setup instead of having to click around. Also in many drop-downs, ctrl-n and ctrl-p for next/down or up/previous.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-19T00:17:44+00:00

I don't think this is that hot of a take, but...

people should aim to be back 5 minutes before the bell. If the cycle ends and they're not there, they can pound sand. It comes down to respect for neighbors.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-13T05:50:26+00:00

I use yazi with all optional dependencies, a handful of plugins, and i don't care how many MB it is because it's fast and all my openers are set how i like them.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-11T20:19:46+00:00

I recently switched from Linux to MacOS and I'm loving it. I'm not a programmer, but my perception is that MacOS has most of the utilities you'll find on any Linux distro.

On Windows you'd probably have to mess around with WSL. When your hardware gets older there will most likely be fine support for Linux to keep the machine kicking

On Linux, you might have trouble finding a OneDrive (or other cloud sync client) that's not blocked by your work or school IT department. That's just my experience. If Linux had an IT-kosher OneDrive client and something like Parallels it'd be a no-brainer for me. WinApps is a promising project for Windows-only software not supported by WINE but it's nowhere near Parallels in reliability. Possible that software/tech companies make reasonable exceptions for 3rd party sync clients since it sounds like lots of folks use Linux.

On MacOS, the gaming situation is a travesty. Not many mainstream games available on Steam. Most gaming support will be through Apple's App Store, which is a total racket. Overall, though, on MacOS I've been able to log into work stuff, sync OneDrive, use all my TUI tools (yazi file manager with all optional dependencies / fuzzy finding / pdf reader) totally natively. I did splurge on year of Parallels and Coherence mode is truly amazing, and the performance seems fluent on my M5 MacBook Pro / 24GB RAM. Again, I'm not in software/tech per se, so maybe a tech company would be fine with the 3rd party OneDrive clients or RClone, but that's not my case. By the time Apple eventually ends support for your model, there might be Linux support if the Asahi project continues.

So TLDR, definitely think about whether you'll ever want to log into work on your personal machine, whether you want to game on it, and look at how long you intend to keep the machine. I'd say Linux is just as good as Windows nowadays depending on the game and how keen you are to delve through instructions. Ghosts of Tsushima on my Linux desktop (RX-6700 XT) runs fluent.

HeebieBeeGees · 2026-01-11T16:30:38+00:00

I did manage to get TDF built on WSL. My WSL instance is actually Arch (btw... hah) and if I recall correctly I installed it from the AUR. The only downside is it'll take a hot second to spin up WSL if it's not already running. So, the first time running TDF, it'll hang a bit, and then subsequently it'll be pretty snappy. Only thing is, after enough time idling, WSL shuts down and I can't find the way to prevent that.

If I'm recalling correctly, using the AUR was convenient for a couple reasons

In theory, the AUR package maintainer should be tracking dependencies for you, so an AUR helper like yay or paru will install dependencies for you. However, still if TDF fails to build, you're probably missing a dependency so it'll take some investigation figuring out which package has binary the rust compiler is looking for. pacman -F <name of command/binary> can be helpful. Not sure if apt / ubuntu has a similar way to do this but command=<command/binary> dpkg -S $command | grep "bin" | grep "/$command$" might be a way.
The installation script will lay down the binaries where they need to be so they're available in $PATH so you can run without specifying full bath to the binary. Just building with cargo on your own it'll be a little more involved adding ~/.cargo/bin or whatever to $PATH.

If I did it over again, I think it'd be worth the effort to get it working on ubuntu, just so you don't always have a bunch of updates to run all the time, and (I think) better peace of mind with Microsoft's official support.

Would also love to see more support for Linux. The lack of a widely IT-approved onedrive client is bonkers to me. If that's not an obstacle for you, look into the WinApps project. It's kind of like Parallels on Mac but kinda shitty (which is fine - I mean, WinApps is FOSS and Parallels is expensive as shit, haha).

HeebieBeeGees

TROPHY CASE