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Homelabbers and Self-Hosting
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HowTo Geek ☛ 10 Tools Every Homelabber Should Try at Least Once
Are you looking for fun (or unique) pieces of software to expand your homelab with? I’ve been on the hunt for new software lately, and found 10 tools that everyone should try at least once. In no particular order, here are tools that have (or will) change how I run my homelab.
Each of these tools are something that I have currently running, or I have run in the past. You'll find things ranging from full-blown operating systems to small network tools and everything in-between, giving you quite a few new things to try out in your homelab this summer.
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HowTo Geek ☛ I'm a Homelab Enthusiast, but I Refuse to Self Host These 5 Services
If you have a homelab, then you’ve likely considered self-hosting every service you use. I’ve thought about that too, but there are certain services that I outright refuse to host at home.
While I've tried self-hosting many things, with services like email and music streaming, I simply found that it's better to pay for instead of self-host. There are a number of reasons why, so here's a list of services that I simply won't run in my homelab.
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HowTo Geek ☛ 7 Self-Hosted Apps I Run 24/7
I self-host a lot of apps in my homelab. Some are just for fun and I spin up and down as needed, and others are crucial parts of my homelab’s infrastructure that I can’t live without. Here are the seven services I make sure are always running.
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HowTo Geek ☛ Why I Self-Host Everything Except Email
On your self-hosting journey, it’s likely you’ll try to self-host everything you can. I know that’s my goal—except for one thing: email. I refuse to self-host my own email, and here’s why I won’t ever do it.
The Appeal of Self-Hosting Everything
With so many data breaches, there’s definitely an appeal to just bring everything you can in-house. I know that I’ve gone down that road, and currently self-host several few services that I used to rely on other companies for.
I self-host things for a few reasons. The primary one is to save money, because it’s cheaper for me to pay for the power bill of a server at my house than to utilize dozens of paid services from a bunch of random online companies. But another byproduct of self-hosting is the enhanced privacy that’s achieved by keeping the data on my own hardware.
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HowTo Geek ☛ Why Self-Hosting an eBook Server Is Harder Than It Should Be
Are you thinking of self-hosting an eBook server? Well, it’s actually pretty difficult. While other media servers are simple to set up, eBook servers are the exact opposite.
Plex is known as one of the best do-it-all media server tools out there. Of course, there’s also Emby, Jellyfin, and Kodi, but all of them have one thing in common: a simple-to-use media server interface.
Plex, for example, can host your movies, TV shows, audiobooks, and photos. While Plex Pass is a paid upgrade and adds a lot of features, that’s also another benefit: it pays developers’ salaries to continue to develop the app and improve it.