Before my last printer died 5 years ago, I was getting good results with Hatchbox filament. Not sure about their current state, but they were the most reliable I had found at that time. Looks like they currently have one I would call navy blue.

My new printer is supposed to arrive today, so I’ll be going through the filament evaluation grind again soon.

Hell, a death tax on assets over $10 million would probably cover it.

I’m using NameCheap. I don’t recall them ever asking me to provide ID. They do have an api (didn’t know that till now) though I’m tired enough at the moment that I can’t make much sense of their documentation.

https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/methods/domains-dns/set-hosts/

Not sure if it’s the simplest way, but this is how I did it. I set up a reverse proxy service in a vm using caddy and then used pihole (also in a vm) to set up a local DNS record pointing to the reverse proxy. The systems need to be set up to use the pihole server as their DNS resolver.

How it works is you type audiobookshelf.local.lan in the address bar and it queries pihole which says it at 192.168.1.100 or whatever. The Caddy web server at that address then passes the request on to the service at 192.168.1.60:8080.

Setup is a bit tedious but it has worked for me.

Looks good.

Only thing I would caution on is all of that USB storage. USB isn’t exactly known for it reliability when used long term for storage devices. Given the current market, however, It will do. When you can afford to, I would move the server into a tower with the storage on SATA.

When I first discovered Linux 20 years ago, I was trying to get a computer up and running for my sister to use to write her homework on. The first distro I tried that mostly worked on that ancient Athlon proc was Ubuntu.

I wound up switching to Ubuntu from Windows XP on my personal computer because I liked that it didn’t try to hide anything from me. I could (and did, often resulting in me needing to reinstall) twist all of the knobs and dials of the OS. The entire world of software that was entirely free to use, that I wasn’t blocked from using because I was poor…was the icing on the cake.

About 5 years ago, I was gifted a new PC with Windows 10 preinstalled.and I decided to give it a try for a while and as long as I was only playing games, working on a text document, or watching Youtube, it was fine. But as soon as I tried to actually do something either sysadmin related or creative, it felt like the OS constantly fighting me.

WSL helped with the sysadmin stuff (mostly, but not with anything related to Windows itself) but if I was working on music, forget it. It was like working covered wet cement. I was always fighting the OS to do whatever it was I was trying to do.

I wound up wiping it and installing Linux on it after about a year of fighting Windows. First NixOS (which I liked) before going back to the distro I know best. Ubuntu.

For me, now, computers are not the toy they were in my youth. They’re a tool. The best tool for a particular job is usually the tool you already know how to use. I know Linux, I can’t say the same for Windows.

I’ve gotten old enough that I no longer have the time to study and really learn how everything in a new OS, or even new piece of software works. So, I stick with what I know until I run into a job that requires me to learn a new tool. Doesn’t happen often anymore.

I’ve been with NameCheap for over a decade. They’re a relatively quiet company that’s been around a while.

They’ve never done anything to make me want to change providers. Have my email through them as well. Good uptime. Ok-ish prices. Good customer service the one time I’ve needed it. Web site takes some getting used to, but it’s also never changed since I started using them.

Generally, it’s as simple as just deleting the Windows NTFS partition. I would leave the others for now. Depending on how you installed your distro they may be related to your Linux installation. Deleting them could prevent you from booting into your Linux installation.

I’m not as familiar with UEFI as BIOS, but I believe UEFI uses a FAT formatted partition for booting into the OS proper.

You may need to adjust the boot order in your UEFI/BIOS afterwards to get it to boot back to Linux afterwards, but that is fairly uncommon in my experience.

The most likely issue you might run into is accidentally wiping your active Linux partition instead of the Windows one.

I would make backups and have your distros install disk handy before you wipe the partitions.

Afterwards, you can resize your linux root to include the now free space or move your home directory to the new partition after formatting it. Your call.

I run both Navidrome and Jellyfin. I would say that Navidrome is probably simpler of the two to setup if you’re only interested in music.

In both cases uploading new music is the same. Upload the tracks to your media directory and wait for the next scan.

:-D

I’m in no position to toss to much shade at the data hoarder community. I’m personally sitting on close to 64TB of media I’ve collected over the years. In my case, most of it legitimately acquired, either by myself or by family, but still. It adds up and most of it hasn’t been accessed more than once or twice.

So long as you don’t need to stockpile old shows you never watch, you can get by on an old laptop and possibly an external drive.

My homelab started out on a Raspberry Pi 2b. Most of the hardware Ive brought online were dumpster specials someone else didn’t want. It can be done on the cheap. Won’t necessarily be reliable, but it can be done cheap.

Well, glad I walked away from SmartThings a couple of years ago. Went with Home Assistant and have never looked back.

At the time I remember being concerned about whether they were going to kill SmartThings off or start charging a subscription as the hub called home for everything. Server time costs and they weren’t charging for it. TANSTAFL. Kinda surprised it’s still alive at all

Yes. Currently using Gemma4:12b behind OpenWebUI and Hermes Agent plus a few lighter models for OCR and tagging in Paperless.

From what I’ve noticed, yes. Considerably.

I’m not knowledgeable enough to explain why, but something about running Baremetal --> VM --> Docker --> Nextcloud-AIO is massively slower than running Baremetal --> Docker --> Nextcloud-AIO. Hell, Nextcloud-AIO on a Pi4 was running faster than when I put it in a much roomier VM.

Someone tried to explain it to me but all I understood was that the databases don’t like that. Something about nested virtualization restricting performance.

Oddly I didn’t run into the same issue when I ran Nextcloud-AIO off of a Digital Ocean VPS. Not sure what they are doing differently, but that was running just as fast as bare metal.

I use Nextcloud to host my calanders. With caldav (what nextcloud uses under the hood), reminders are handled by the client. I use Apple’s Reminders app on my phone and Thunderbird on my laptop.

Nextcloud does have a built in calandering app, but I’ve not used it much. I think it can do email notifications of calander events.

It’s all good. The name came out a random name generator a while back. I liked the name enough that I started using it generally for my fediverse presence. No meaning beyond that.

I currently run the official Nextcloud-AIO. No issues once I got the reverse proxy figured out. That was a bit of a pain at the time. Caddy hadn’t yet become a popular choice for reverse proxies.

I will say that Nextcloud really wants dedicated hardware, not a VM, or proformance will suffer. Still useable but it tends to to be a bit slower. Can’t vouch for the office suite as I just don’t use it.

Wait, do we actually have unemployment assistance in the US? I thought it was just a slush fund for boondoggles I was forced to pay into. Every time I’ve tried to apply for it over the last 20 years I was rejected.

I’ve had mixed success with the open source drivers for printing. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. Just depends on the individual printer model. Newer models seem to just work.

Attached scanners though always seem to need their proprietary drivers to function.

Up side, Brother doesn’t seem to pack in any useless software with their Linux drivers.

Brother Printers have a well deserved reputation. They work. You will probably need their proprietary drivers (which you can get from their website), but after that they just work.

I know they make a .deb available, but I think there’s also a .rpm if you’re repping Redhat land.