Welcome to the first issue of Homelab Dispatch. Each week I'll be sharing current news, interesting articles, and projects for you to work on in your own homelab along with a few of my thoughts on my homelab journey.

update

You can build your own homelab.

That's what I keep telling myself and that's what I'm going to tell you, too. I've been into computers and electronics for as long as I can remember, and I have taken on projects that would be considered as "homelab projects" in the past, but they were just short-lived experiments that fizzled out.

The difference this time is that I'm making this a long-term commitment that will have educational and practical results.

My goal is to replace cloud-based apps and subscriptions with self-hosted alternatives and in the process, I'm going to learn as much as I can about computers and networking. Things will break...but that is just an opportunity to learn how to fix them.

It's going to be a fun and educational journey. You should join me.

read & watch

This week we're focusing on starting on the right foot. That means finding our reasons for why we want a homelab. Here are a few things from across the internet that resonate for me:

• ​Digital Independence - Henry Leach writes about how self-hosting gives you better control of your own data, privacy, and ease of changing platforms with an emphasis on pragmatism and being aware of the tradeoffs.
• ​Self-Host & Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own - Simon Späti writes about his journey into tech independence and self-hosting while also giving a nice list of services to try in your own homelab.
• ​I Installed Linux (so should you) - While not specifically about homelabs, PewDiePie talks about his experience switching to Linux as his main OS which has a lot of similarities to starting a homelab if you aren’t too familiar with Linux.

build

Depending on your approach, any operating system can be used for your homelab, but Linux is the only real option if you are making a decision to be in this for the long haul. Depending on your comfort level, try one of these two options:

• ​Ubuntu - If you’re entirely new to Linux, I would recommend you download Ubuntu, put it on a thumb drive, and give it a try. You can run it directly off of the thumb drive on any computer you own without affecting your standard operating system. When you’re done, just turn off your computer, take out the thumb drive, and turn your computer back on. Everything will be back to normal.
• ​Proxmox - Proxmox is a hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor. It allows you to run one or more virtual machines on your physical computer and helps with managing things like RAM, storage, and CPU capacity. I’m learning about it now because it is amazingly useful for running a homelab.

end

Thanks for reading the first issue of Homelab Dispatch. I hope you learned something and also found the motivation to do some work on your own homelab this week.

See you next week,
-Trent

P.S. Was this useful? What homelab topics do you want to read about next? Take the poll or reply to this email. I will read every response.