Guides for running your own services instead of renting them from hyperscalers. Covers Nextcloud for file sync, Jellyfin for media, Vaultwarden for passwords, Gitea for version control, and dozens of other open source platforms that replace the subscription stack most people default to. Every guide includes the Docker Compose file, the reverse proxy config, the backup approach, and the failure modes we have hit in production. Self-hosting is not about paranoia. It is about owning the infrastructure your life runs on, understanding how it works, and keeping your data under your own roof. If you want sovereignty over your digital life, this is the practical path.
The Commands That Actually Matter Docker has over 50 commands. You’ll use about 10 of them regularly. The rest are either for building images, managing swarm clusters, or edge cases you’ll look up once a year. This guide covers the 10 commands I run most frequently across six Docker hosts, with the flags I actually […]
10 Docker Commands Every Homelab Admin Should Know Read More »
What Docker Compose Actually Is (and Isn’t) Docker Compose is a way to define and run multi-container applications using a single YAML file. Instead of typing out long docker run commands with a dozen flags, you describe what you want in a file called docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up -d. That’s it. From the
Docker Compose for Beginners: A Practical Guide Read More »
Why Debian 12 for Docker Debian is what Ubuntu is built on, but without the extras. No snap packages, no Ubuntu Pro nag screens, no Canonical telemetry, no systemd-resolved stub resolver causing DNS headaches in containers. It’s a leaner, more predictable base for a Docker host, and there’s a reason it’s the default choice for
How to Install Docker on Debian 12 (Bookworm) Read More »
Why Docker on a Raspberry Pi Makes Sense I have three Raspberry Pis running Docker in my homelab. One handles DNS and ad blocking, another runs monitoring and a dashboard, and the third runs Listmonk for newsletter management. They draw about 5 watts each, run silently, and cost less than a month of any cloud
How to Install Docker on Raspberry Pi (2026 Guide) Read More »
The Windows Minecraft Server: Start Here, Graduate Later Most people’s first server of any kind runs on Windows. That is not a criticism. If Windows is what you have, Windows is where you start. I ran my own first servers on Windows Server 2003, and the fundamentals are the same regardless of OS: install the
How to Set Up a Minecraft Server on Windows Read More »
Why Docker Is the Right Way to Run Minecraft I have set up Minecraft servers on bare metal, on VMs, on Raspberry Pis, and in Docker containers. Docker wins. Not because it is trendy, but because it solves every annoyance you will hit with a bare-metal installation. From the homelab: Minecraft servers were one of
How to Run a Minecraft Server in Docker Read More »
Why a Minecraft Server Is the Best First Server Project I have been running servers professionally for over twenty years. Linux, Windows, bare metal, virtualised, containerised, on-prem, cloud. And if someone asked me what the single best learning project is for someone who wants to understand server administration, I would tell them to set up
How to Set Up a Minecraft Server on Ubuntu 24.04 Read More »
Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home: Which DNS Ad Blocker Should You Use? I have run both. Pi-hole has been my primary DNS filter for over a year, and I spent three months with AdGuard Home running in parallel on a test network to give it a fair evaluation. They solve the same problem. They both work
Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home: Which Should You Use? Read More »
How to Install Pi-hole on Windows (WSL2 Guide) I will be honest upfront: running Pi-hole on Windows via WSL2 is a compromise. It works, and there are legitimate reasons to do it, but it is not the ideal deployment for network-wide DNS filtering. If you have a spare Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, or a
How to Install Pi-hole on Windows (WSL2 Guide) Read More »
How to Run Pi-hole in Docker (DNS Ad Blocking with Docker Compose) If you are already running Docker on your server, putting Pi-hole in a container is the obvious choice. Your DNS service gets the same isolation, portability, and reproducibility as every other service in your stack. You can version control the compose file, blow
How to Run Pi-hole in Docker (Complete Guide) Read More »
