> Homelab is becoming a thing even for people who never had experience with computer, ...

Oh totally. I got my brother, who lives on the other side of the world and who's not a dev/sysadmin, just a poweruser, to install Proxmox and he's now using GPU passthrough to have VMs run different AI models (in either Linux or Windows) for image generation, experimenting, etc. He's also got a NAS with RAID etc.

To me a homelab is the 2020's version of having fun with computing: there's something incredibly refreshing in disconnecting my sub-LAN from the Internet and still have music, movies, private pastebin (yup I use this at times between computers for simple stuff I don't want to both scp'ing), private Git repositories, complete backup system (including offline HDDs/SSDs that I rotate into a safe at the bank), etc.

A movie projector, a dumb one, is another very cool thing: connected to nothing but a HDMI cable (not that HDMI is the best standard ever but it does the job).

And to be sure I can still code and work without having a nanny holding my hand as if I was a toddler, I regularly have coding sessions where I don't use Claude Code (but I also pay for a subscription: these things aren't mutually exclusive).

For anyone who wants to have a fun, a used HP Workstation with ECC memory is basically $200 and makes a perfectly fine server at home. Doesn't need to be up 24/7 either: my online service that is up 24/7 is my unbound DNS resolver and I run that one on a Raspberry Pi (for the low power consumption). The rest of my homelab (two Proxmox servers) is basically something I only need when I'm awake/at my desk. So I turn them off at night.

You never go full cloud.

▲

asveikau 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's kind of funny that people are talking about "home labs" as a new thing because I've been running some form of servers on consumer PC hardware in my home since around 1998. For me this was an inseparable part of getting to know Linux and *BSD in that era.

I guess I'm just old though.

▲

h4kunamata 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>I've been running some form of servers on consumer PC hardware in my home since around 1998

My excuse is that I never had the financial stability that I have now in my middle 30s to get things going, also moving oversea and what not didn't help either.

But I didn't go crazy, I have 3 Proxmox servers running a few services, Pihole + Unbound as recursive DNS to avoid DNS poisoning and personal data tracking.

A DIY TrueNAS as the primary system to have a copy of my data.

I have a 4K bluray with physical media, but I do have Jellyfin also because nothing matches 80s, 90s, early 2000s movies and buying DVD in 2026 is pointless. Also, it is not easy or very, very expensive to find a bluray copy of old movies in 2026. Jellyfin solves that.

All my servers are consuming 110W 200VA tops, connected to a second hand APC UPS 1000VA.

If the whole world goes to shit right now, I can still run all my stuff without dependency to the internet.

My last goal is to have a solar/battery system so if WW3 really happens sending us to the cave age, wherever I am will still be 21st century.

▲

protonbob 2 days ago | parent [-]

How does Jellyfin solve findings Blu-ray copies of old movies? Unless you say you just pirate them? Jellyfin isn’t just for movie pirates.

▲

10729287 2 days ago | parent [-]

You can still borrow a lot at your local library and rip them yourself.

▲

protonbob 2 days ago | parent [-]

That’s still pirating.

	▲	esseph 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Is it though? He wouldn't have paid for it either way, or would have either way due to taxes and how a lot of libraries work. And it wouldn't have taken anything away from the library itself or other library customers.

▲

downut 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1988. On a math TA salary I paid $600 for an 80MB (That's megabytes) hard drive. I had dialup. I also had Turbo Pascal and an 8087 coprocessor. I was a MS student in computational math AKA numerical analysis.

It was goddam glorious.

Took until 1995ish to have a homelab to experiment with FreeBSD and later Linux over a 10-Base-T network with gcc/g++ and dialup access to this thing called "The World Wide Web". The browser had a throbber dinosaur.

It was even more goddam glorious.

Right now I've got three main systems with decent CPUs and 128GB of memory, and several emphemeral satellite systems. With 8GB of NVIDIA VRAM I'm running gemma4:31b just fine on my media system. Which curiously enough has, ah... media on it.

I feel like I have a good idea how EV owners feel right now. (We have a Prius.)

▲

h4kunamata 2 days ago | parent [-]

>I feel like I have a good idea how EV owners feel right now. (We have a Prius.)

The difference is that you don't own your EV, it is a computer on wheel. Any firmware update like Tesla has done in the past and features are no longer available.

That is totally opposite of homelab, you have full control, you flash firmware that gives you full control over devices.

I am hard core Linux user, my wireless access point runs Linux, my router is a Sophos baremetal running OPNSense/FreeBSD Unix. My 3D printer is DIY running Debian Linux.

That is the best thing about homelab, nobody can take it away from you, you own everything, it is yours and yours only.

▲

downut 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

"The difference is that you don't own your EV, it is a computer on wheel. Any firmware update like Tesla has done in the past and features are no longer available."

Yeah, I think that's right.

I only thought in one dimension: reliance on corporate controlled high density existing infiltration of fossil-fuel delivery infrastructure. Which is worthless if the price is occasionally exorbitantly volatile or might even run into zero supply issues.

Another equally important dimension is: that EV car might just be a puppet, and not you running the puppet.

I'm pretty sure the Prius doesn't phone home (2015), but I admit that I've not gone deep into it.

I can't stand this thing I just did in this comment where I tried not to sound like an AI. I might have to give up short comments entirely because I can't generate enough context for authenticity credibility. <= It's a fact, and that right there sounds like AI to me now.

▲

drnick1 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The difference is that you don't own your EV

You could unplug or shield the cellular modem to take the car "offline."

▲

h4kunamata 2 days ago | parent [-]

EV is a computer and designed to work as such.

Make it go offline and watch things going south haha

	▲	Kirby64 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Like… what? I won’t get traffic on my navigation? My maps will get outdated?

▲

esseph 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"since 1998"

We're old.

A lot of HNers weren't born yet.

▲

Rekindle8090 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Oh totally. I got my brother, who lives on the other side of the world and who's not a dev/sysadmin, just a poweruser, to install Proxmox and he's now using GPU passthrough to have VMs run different AI models (in either Linux or Windows) for image generation, experimenting, etc. He's also got a NAS with RAID etc."

dude this is way more than "power user" you're being unserious.

If you tell a genuine power user, someone comfortable with Windows registry edits, Office macros, maybe some light PowerShell scripting, that they can "totally do what my brother did," and then the actual task list is Proxmox installation, IOMMU group isolation, VFIO stub drivers, GPU passthrough debugging, RAID configuration, and multi-OS VM management, subnetting, raid and HBA configuration, you're setting them up for a brutal wall of frustration.

	▲	balamatom 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		>you're being unserious PSA: the answer to "you're being unserious" starts with "are you fucking kidding me?"

▲

andquartzofc 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> and who's not a dev/sysadmin

> He's also got a NAS with RAID etc.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

	▲	bigyabai 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You'd be surprised. There are tens of thousands (probably millions?) of people that happily use NFS or hosted services on a bog-standard Windows device with no gripes.