Best of Homelab — October 2025

1. 1
   Article

   Hacker News·33w

   Why Self-host?

   Explores the motivations for self-hosting personal services, focusing on privacy and digital sovereignty. Discusses how calendar, contact, and location data reveal sensitive information about users, and argues against relying on big tech companies. Provides practical recommendations for self-hosting calendar/contact servers (Baïkal), email (Stalwart, Mailcow), smart home automation (Home Assistant), RSS aggregators (FreshRSS), and location tracking (dawarich). Shares a personal journey from single server to a 3-node Kubernetes cluster setup.

   41

   2
2. 2
   Article

   Hacker News·33w

   Leveling Up My Homelab

   A detailed account of rebuilding a personal homelab from a basic setup with limited compute and manual configuration into a production-grade Kubernetes cluster. The new infrastructure features 8 worker nodes, Talos Linux with PXE boot, GitOps via Argo CD, 10G networking, and plans for GPU workloads and multi-site clustering. The rebuild addresses previous limitations around orchestration, disaster recovery, scalability, and remote access while enabling serious experimentation with modern cloud-native technologies.

   31

   3
3. 3
   Article

   selfh.st·30w

   Self-Host Weekly (24 October 2025)

   A weekly roundup covering self-hosting news and updates. Highlights include Jellyfin's major v10.11.0 release with backup features and database conversion, MinIO's controversial shift away from pre-built containers, and FUTO's grant program controversy. Features Velld, a new self-hosted database backup platform with S3 integration and web-based management. Includes software updates, community discussions around Home Assistant dashboard development, and curated video tutorials on topics like Docker deployment, Nextcloud AIO, GitLab self-hosting, and Unraid media stacks.

   20
4. 4
   Article

   Hacker News·32w

   More random home lab things I've recently learned

   A collection of homelab lessons learned covering NVMe SSD installation on Raspberry Pi 5, ARM64 Proxmox deployment challenges including OOM kills and BIOS configuration, Proxmox Backup Server deadlock issues when ZFS volumes fill completely, and various tools including CyberPower UPS management software, Davis CalDAV server, and Mealie recipe manager. Includes practical solutions like using kpartx for VM disk mounting, fixing PBS storage deadlocks by removing ZFS snapshots, and configuring kernel page size for ARM virtualization.

   10