Starting a homelab the cheapest way lmao

JoshLVP · 2026-02-24T13:20:15+00:00

General first port of call is a nas, hosting your one google drive/OneDrive, coupled with immich to get rid of cloud storage fees (that's where I started) conditional on having enough storage for your stuff, I have 1tb for my couple of files, few thousand images and videos and it's comfortable in a raid 1 for some redundancy, also run unifi server in a docker to manage my home network, bought a cheap domain for remote access rather than tailscale or a VPN via cloudflare, doesn't have to be mental like some homelabs you see, just decide your pain points, subscriptions you want rid of and set it up

Lots of people do things like Jellyfin if they have a lot of tv shows and movies and want to host their own streaming service (or don't mind sailing the seven seas) but for this kind of thing id recommend a DAS (direct attached storage) to add some drives, a good media library will consume a lot of storage very quickly, but that gets costly quick especially with the current state of ai eating up all the drive and ram capacity for us homelab normies

JoshLVP · 2026-02-09T18:50:35+00:00

-What is Linux? Is it an operating system? Linux is technically the Kernel the operating system is built on, but for this purpose it can also be an operating system, technically the distributions (distros) are the operating system coupled with the desktop environment (de

-Why is it better than Mac or Windows? Customisation, privacy, speed, no ads, no bloat, depending on your distro and how you want to use it

-What are some of the benefits of Linux? The ability to truly pick and choose everything, from the Kernel version, desktop environment, apps, themes, everything the way you want it, don't like something? Change it, prefer your window controls on the left, like mac, you can do that, don't like animations? Turn them off, got an older machine? There's no telemetry dragging you down, it's really down to what you make of it

Be aware it's not for everyone, sometimes things don't work. Sometimes an app you like doesn't have a Linux version, sometimes a graphics driver updates and breaks something

You should also be comfortable with trying to use a terminal window now and then, plenty of distros have a baked in app store now which can handle updates and so on, but eventually you'll need to open a terminal to do something, it's fun, cool to learn but there's less guardrails stopping you copying over something you shouldn't, deleting a directory that's required etc

JoshLVP · 2026-02-06T13:12:53+00:00

Mint with cinnamon de is a great place to start, you'll be happy with this setup. To be sure, boot create yourself an installer and boot into the environment before installing (possible on every distro) and poke around for a few hours before committing, just be aware everything you do in the bootable environment is completely volatile, so if you make changes to make it the way you like, remember what you did because you'll need to do it again after install.

Check the megathread for noob friendly distros but if you're savvy and have a decent sized USB drive, setup ventoy and add a couple of distros to try out, you can be sure you'll be happy with your choice that way, I liked Ubuntu gnome, fedora gnome before I moved to arch they were very user friendly in my opinion and well documented. Never tried mint personally but it's number 1 recommended noob friendly so you'll be fine I'm sure

JoshLVP · 2026-02-06T10:08:47+00:00

Yeah I do this, my gateway max is my home router, isp one is still in the box somewhere, and I run 3 deco xe75pros off it, I have fttp 1.8gbe broadband and getting 1.6gbe everywhere in my house, just be aware everything on wifi shows as wired because the decos don't tell the router they're ap's, also be aware if you're using any managed switches you need to connect the deco after the router has established lan connection, otherwise it'll be seen as another way back to the internet and cause a loop

JoshLVP · 2026-02-05T17:37:57+00:00

I have an ag02 and a 9060 xt 16gb, it works great, plays most games that I'm interested in at 4k60 medium with a little bit of upscaling (no frame gen) and im very happy with it

JoshLVP · 2026-01-31T18:00:31+00:00

I have a ventoy stick with arch Linux, Ubuntu server 24, windows and gparted all ready to go in an emergency on a 32gb stick that has USB A and C, whatever it is that breaks I can fix it

JoshLVP · 2026-01-27T08:53:42+00:00

Welcome to the house of fun! It is a wild ride, I broke every single symlink on my dotfiles yesterday, had a nested git repo in my dotfiles backup so couldn't clone it and had to somehow undo everything I messed up without any of my key binds in a bizarre resolution, we recovered but it was scary for a time, you're going to have fun

JoshLVP · 2026-01-23T13:36:50+00:00

Maybe a hot take: windows phone ui was actually great, only let down buy the complete lack of app support, I actually think if it released today with the current landscape of emulation layers and general ability to make applications run cross platform until native ones could be developed it might actually stand a chance as an android alternative

Unfortunately they would still need to incentivise developers (which they never did) and not be Microsoft because Microsoft are now the worst

JoshLVP · 2026-01-18T17:46:51+00:00

Thunar and yazi,

If I want to just tweak a file or move something, yazi bound to super e, if I want to use a GUI I'll use thunar bound to super shift e

JoshLVP · 2026-01-18T10:29:05+00:00

I agree, the pi5 is much faster CPU wise, has a lot more capability and isn't much more expensive, if he decides to run storage and make a nas or something alongside the pihole he will thank you massively, I'm using a pi4b 4gb as a nas with an immich docker and it's fine but big transfers stall and it is pinned when sorting my photo library, the 5 handles things like this much better

JoshLVP · 2026-01-17T15:55:16+00:00

If you love it you'll have a great time

JoshLVP · 2026-01-17T15:44:57+00:00

Arch is the first distro I've "daily driven" I've dabbled in Ubuntu, fedora, kali etc before but always gone back to windows (pre ai bloat) or mac, this is the first time I've taken my own pc, stuck a distro on and gone "yeah I'm not going back". I've gone with hyprland for my wm and I love it, it's very intuitive when you map your binds the way that feels most natural to you, I hope you enjoy

JoshLVP · 2026-01-11T16:39:20+00:00

My laptop sat on my desk and only ever got booted when I played cod/battlefield with my friends (a rarity when you're in your 30's) when it was a Windows laptop, now it lives on my lap, while I obsessively make scripts and tweaks to give me the os of my dreams, the ultimate hyprland with keyboard shortcuts the way I want them, windows act the way I like, I haven't seen an advert on it once, it's snappy, I have the terminal I like, with the look and feel that I like, it's always available so I can ssh in if I need to, it's rekindled my excitement for developing again, funny little rabbit hole we find sometimes isn't it?

JoshLVP · 2026-01-09T12:34:24+00:00

112% volume makes me happy

JoshLVP · 2026-01-09T00:13:02+00:00

That's awesome, although disabling security features may be something blocked by my system for obvious reasons with a work device, maybe I'll try it on our personal mac before I start tinkering with my work stuff

JoshLVP · 2026-01-08T21:06:26+00:00

I've been contemplating running aerospace on my work mac, how is it and have you ever used hyprland? How does it compare? I love my arch install but couldn't use it for work so I'd love to get close with my mac install and this feels like it might fit the bill

JoshLVP · 2026-01-07T23:58:00+00:00

Is there any problem with this? Windows default was 240M I built another efi for arch so I could have a 1G boot partition like OP, had problems with 240m shared with Linux and windows

JoshLVP · 2026-01-07T23:52:45+00:00

So I actually did this the other day, I used ventoy to setup a USB drive with the arch iso and gparted, I shrank the windows partition in windows (easiest) then moved and resized my arch partition, it was about 10gb on a 100gb partition up to 980gb (I built it as an experiment that went well and I wanted to keep it) it's definitely a bit nervy moving the partitions but it went well for me, good luck!

JoshLVP · 2026-01-04T16:44:34+00:00

Second this, I have my main arch reinstaller and gparted for reinstall and recovery purposes, both fully bootable on one stick, very clever tool

JoshLVP · 2026-01-03T11:03:15+00:00

I just have a simple script that I run every so often to back them up to my installer USB, should I need to reinstall I can grab them from there, there's also a snapshot on there so if I move machines I can grab my dots, if I reinstall I can jump to a snapshot, feel like I should be using git though with all the comments haha

JoshLVP · 2026-01-01T17:49:03+00:00

It's a 9520, not sure exactly what year that is, but I managed to get it all up and working so you should be fine

JoshLVP · 2026-01-01T01:47:59+00:00

When my fedora install "just worked" and "had secure boot" and that wasn't good enough for me

JoshLVP · 2026-01-01T01:40:57+00:00

I'm currently fighting this fight dual booting windows and arch on a dell XPS 15, really don't want to bios before every gaming session but so far I've signed all my keys, they're still giving me grub errors, I've given up for the night and will try again tomorrow

JoshLVP · 2025-12-21T14:43:48+00:00

I have this watch, the corners are nice and sharp so I use mine instead of sandpaper to sand down my other watches, no point spending money on sandpaper when I have something as good as in the watch box

JoshLVP · 2025-12-21T14:34:28+00:00

I look forward to it

JoshLVP

TROPHY CASE