NotYourNet

Uses

 8 mins

This is an eternal work in progress

I recently saw several sites that have a uses page. Great idea. I had some bits and pieces already but I will update this page as time progresses.

Software

  • tt-rss - Tiny Tiny rss
    • Selfhosted in Docker, one of the tools I use nearly every day
  • docker
    • So easy to throw in a new app or service to see how things work. I have it running on a separate physical machine, in a vm and on my laptop. It is not always the best or most convenient way to long-term run thins but it sure beats building and maintaining a separate vm on top of the app.
    • I just Portainer to get that quick and easy overview of what is running, what can be removed etc but I mostly use docker-compose the buid and start containers
  • Firefox - daily driver
    • Syncing tabs between many devices. Not sure I like where Mozilla is going lately but I have no real alternative for now
  • Signal and WhatsApp
  • Mastodon and Pixelfed
    • I recently started nosing around and so far I like the concept. Not sure if this is here to stay. I have never felt the need to do Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.
    • June 2023: Pixelfed was nice but I didn’t do much with it so I removed it from my systems and deleted my account.
  • Goodreads The Storygraph and Last.fm
    • Looking for alternatives that cover my preferences (there are no needs here) to record what I have read and listened to (not really interested in the community parts)
    • Made the switch to The StoryGraph recently to see if this feels better. Had to do a lot of additional work to get the read dates into StoryGraph as Goodreads does not seem to export that properly.
  • hugo
    • I switched from WordPress to Hugo recently as the complex environment was making it difficult to do what I want to do; occasionally throw out a piece for myself or anyone that bothers to read it; not worry about a gazillion options how to present it. Fun to learn, easy to move around. Lack of management environment has me looking into headless CMS’s. Chris Wiegman recently posted a toot that really made sense to me.
  • DashyHomepage
    Dashy is very nice, but homepage is simpler. Fits better.
  • HomeAssistant
  • SubSonic Navidrome
    • My music player/streamer for many years. Abandoned by the developer so I am no longer exposing this to the internet. Looking for alternatives.
    • Switched recently to Navidrome as it is now available as an app on my TrueNAS server where all my ripped CDs live. Pretty happy with it so far. Need to explore it a bit more but it does what it says on the tin. And it scrobbles so, me happy.
  • xcp-ng + Xen Orchestra
    • I have used VMware esxi for years before the switch to xcp-ng. I have been playing with virtualization since early xen days, compiling it on my linux server. Switched to esxi after using it at work but always looked at alternatives. Last year I took the plunge and installed xcp-ng on an older machine to test the waters and migrated some vms over. Never looked back.
    • Xen Orchestra runs in a docker container on my management server
  • Bitwarden Premium license user
    • Mainly used as extension in Firefox, overall maintenance via website or local app
  • Calibre and Calibre-web
    • I have been reading ebooks since early 2000, starting on a Palm V. I moved to reading on my phone but I always stayed away from drm-protected books. You can guess where I get them. I do buy the books when they are offered drm-free whenever I find them.
    • I run Calibre on TrueNAS to maintain the library, Calibre-web on TrueNAS because it is so much easier to search and browse and Calibre as application on my laptop recently to load books onto my Kindle (simple rsync from the nas to bring it up to date whenever I want)
  • foobar2000
    • The one reason, apart from running updates, I reboot into Windows on my laptop is that there is (read: I have not found) a good alternative for this app. For me it rip’s CDs, tags them, renames the files etc and if I want to update tags this is by far the easiest app I know. Getting it to run under Wine is a future target

OS

Linux as workstation

  • Manjaro (Plasma KDE) as daily driver on my laptop
  • I like using linux because of the freedom but also because of the occassional challenge when things do not work as expected
  • Nothing against Macs and Windows, I support them all in my family; I just use what is the best mix of convience and fun for me
  • I like KDE Plasma, minimal is not my thing. And Manjaro being based on Arch Linux is a rolling release OS which suits my preference to update often.

Windows 10/11

  • Work related, but also as second boot option on my laptop and as a vm for the odd stuff that I don’t like (spending the time and effort to get) running on Linux

Linux - various distros as server OS

  • My main server OS was Gentoo for many many years until virtualization allowed me to run multiple instances. I am still running it and I still enjoy compiling a new kernel, manually updating configs and booting into a new version and see if everything works. The issues that happened, often caused by myself or updates, have learned me so much.
  • Debian and or Ubuntu mostly for small servers with one or a few functions
  • Trying Arch Linux as it feels close to home after running Gentoo for many years. Installing Arch is simpler than installing Gentoo, at least in 2022 :-)

FreeBSD

Hardware

laptop

My daily driver is a Lenovo Ideapad with 16 Gb of memory, 512 Gb of NVME storage and a 15.6" screen, powered by an AMD Ryzen-5 4600U (15ARE05). Very happy with the performance, the screen is ok. My only issue is the keyboard; the numerical keyboard is so close to the normal keyboard that I have to look to see where my fingers are. Next one will have a clear separation between numerical and a normal keyboard, or no numerical keyboard at all. It is actually triple-booting at the moment as I have Windows 11, Manjaro (KDE Plasma) and Endeavour Linux installed. I rarely boot into Windows or Endeavour.

This one replaced an Asus VivoBook S301LA (Intel i5-4200U, 6Gb memory, 256 GB SSD SATA) that was performing fine for me but the screen resolution was getting too low and I could only upgrade the memory to I think 12 Gb.

gaming pc

I sometimes want to play a game, mostly older games I used to play frequently and the occasional new(er) game and I abused my laptop for that. Not an ideal situation. Recently I found a nice little box from Miniforum, the UM560 XT (what’s in a name) and ordered it as a barebone. I added 2 x 16 Gb and a 1 Tb m.2 SSD and installed multiple OSes just to get a feel. Linux and Windows work just fine and I settled for Windows 11 at the moment as that is most compatible with the games I want to play. I want to dive into Wine and Steam etc later but for now this works.

phone

Dec 2022: switched to a Google Pixel 6a. Because of the camera.
Previously: Samsung A51, known as Area51, because it offered a good balance between cost and ability. I admire the polish of iPhones and I detest their walled garden. Not so happy about the information hunger of Android/Google/Samsung either but at least I have more choice and more control.

NAS - storage server

  • Years ago I found a really good deal for a Dell PowerEdge T20. It has been running FreeNAS, now TrueNAS Core, since day one. I maxed out the memory to 32 Gb ECC memory, and with 3 x 4 Tb HDD and 2 x 500 Gb SSD I have enough storage for my needs. Using TrueNAS allows me to add local apps via plugins and jails that have direct access to the storage.
  • Recently the power supply just .. died. After approx 7 years of constant running I am not surprised. Luckily I had a twin machine doing nothing so a power supply transplant was a matter of minutes. I am looking at a successor in terms of hardware.

Virtualisation server

Management ‘server’

DNS/DHCP

Networking

  • switch - Netgear unmanaged 8 port gigabit
  • router - Fritz!box 5530 , via provider
    • DHCP switched off, handled by internally
    • Port forwarding done here
  • wireless - Netgear Orbi mesh set RBK23, one router and two satellites

Home Automation

  • RPi running HomeAssistent, needs it’s own page I guess
  • Ikea Tradfri stuff
  • Xiaomi Mi stuff
updatedupdated2023-12-272023-12-27