Recent Valnet Articles in XDA and HowTo Geek

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 04, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • HowTo Geek ☛ I Tried Using a Classic Netbook in 2025, and It Didn't Go Well

    I replaced the netbook's original hard drive with an SSD a few years ago, and I maxed out the RAM to 2GB. That's still not much memory, though, and most modern desktop operating systems have dropped support for 32-bit processors. Windows 11 and recent versions of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Linux Mint require 64-bit CPUs.

  • Applications

    • HowTo Geek ☛ Why Do Some Open-Source Apps Get Multiple Updates Every Day?

      Have you ever wondered why some open-source apps receive multiple updates throughout the day? There are a number of reasons, but it all comes down to a robust open source community.

    • HowTo Geek ☛ 3 Self-Hosted Alternatives to Google Photos

      Are you ready to ditch Google Photos and self-host your own photo server? There are a number of ways to go about doing that, allowing you to store your pictures without giving Google the rights to crawl through them all.

      Whether you already have a storage server running at your home or you’re looking to get started, here are three self-hosted alternatives to Google Photos. I've ordered them from easiest and most basic to most advanced and fully-featured.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • XDA ☛ I didn't know how to get started with Linux, but these tips helped me out

      Switching operating systems is a big decision, especially if you are doing it after a long commitment to something like Windows or macOS. It's like stepping into uncharted territory, forgetting everything you've learnt until this point, and starting afresh. Switching to Linux might stem from an outdated system that cannot handle the latest Windows or macOS version, or a personal choice to keep the prying eyes of large corporations at bay. But it doesn't need to be overwhelming, troubling, or complex. There's a small learning curve, but once you overcome it, Linux becomes just like any other regular operating system.

      I learned it the hard way and don't want new Linux adopters facing the same challenge. You can adopt several tricks to ease into your Linux journey and maybe settle on a distro that makes computing fun. Let's discuss them in detail.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • XDA ☛ 4 reasons Clonezilla is the perfect tool for cloning and backing up your drives

    One of my laptops now serves as a dedicated Ubuntu machine, acting as a perfect test device for testing apps and self-hosted services. But there's a severe lack of disk backup and system image creation apps in the operating system. You can understand my frustration with copying each file from a directory to an external disk, which is not feasible for large copy operations. However, it's no longer a problem for me, as I use Clonezilla to create full system backups, saving me time.

    It provides me with the flexibility to run disk-to-disk backups or create system images with minimal effort. There are several other perks, including multiple backup modes and the ability to restore the created system image using the same tool. Here are four reasons why you shouldn't look elsewhere if you want to make full system backups.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • XDA ☛ I built a home lab with Canonical MicroCloud, and it works better than I expected

      As someone who loves working on server projects, I always keep my eyes out for virtualization platforms and containerization tools – even more so when the tools are fairly obscure. Take SmartOS, for example, which offers solid Jail and VM support, and is my top choice for building Unix-like servers. Or even XCP-ng and Harvester, which are quite the underdogs in the home lab landscape.

      So, you can imagine my pleasure when I stumbled upon Canonical’s MicroCloud. Rather than running as a full-fledged distribution, MicroCloud aggregates my favorite home lab-centric services and ships them inside a neat UI. I won’t say that it doesn’t have any issues, but it’s a solid change of pace from the usual server-oriented platforms.