SelfHosting is easy with PaaS

Install any Ai stuff, via UI:

• https://pinokio.computer/
  • https://github.com/pinokiocomputer/pinokio
  • https://docs.pinokio.computer/download/

MIT | AI Browser

Tl;DR

A random server for ~4$/month is all you need.

• https://one.one.one.one/

There was another attack to npm affecting Posthog!

And…one for REACT.

Which is why i added this security faq for a refresh.

Intro

I tend to get inspired with this kind of vm and containers that im running posts.

As I played with PaaS, wanted to proove how easy and quick is to set them into a VPS for ~4$/month.

If you need a NAS, you can check HexOS

But as is paid, consider

• https://fleet.linuxserver.io/

Intro

I saw this post coming up next and inmediately thought that I should put an IoT related ebook after this.

Specially after the learnings of the Obfuscator project, where I merged the source code of serving an ebook via FastAPI to the one of rendering the PDF via R.

NEW - 1 WebApp to n eBooks

Source Code a Web App to serve md content via web ebook and also downlodable as PDFs

Expect ,n’ to be:

1. Webpage creator: Because you can own your brand
2. Homelabs: I started this ebook because everything has potential failures
3. IoT: This is the one I want to put together as I write this post :)

This time, adding bring more languages for the ebooks is on the table. Locale i18n!

In the end of the day, its been alrady 150+ posts this year (totally unexpected).

So a distilled version with less noise, less chaos and more ordered for others to get value from.

I need more of:

Excalidraw x Notes x SSGs

Im a big fan of Excalidraw for D&A, specially architectural diagrams.

For those times when you dont want to use MermaidKS, but just to make a quick drawing.

https://blog.excalidraw.com/

We all need to tell data stories sometimes: https://blog.excalidraw.com/tell-your-story-with-charts/

Even before jumping to a Streamlit PoC, you can mockup very quickly via Excalidraw, like: https://excalidraw.com/#json=6443031091740672,amxJZJxlZAlUBLADWIukFg

Once everyone is onboard, we can continue and end up with some cool PBi or a GCP Looker Dashboard.

Venn diagrams for data modelling and architecture are also appreciated

What’s also great?

That Excalidraw can interprete MermaidJS Syntax an render also the diagrams :)

Oh…and also excel tables are rendered into cool graphs.

Yea, thats this DevOps diagram

That’s a great question, as Excalidraw is very popular in the open-source and PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) communities!

Yes, there are several excellent open-source note-taking tools and even a few ways to incorporate Excalidraw into an SSG (Static Site Generator).

📝 Open Source Note-Taking Tools

Here are a few prominent open-source note-taking applications that support Excalidraw:

Note on Excalidraw Itself: Excalidraw is entirely open-source and you can self-host the editor itself if you just need a drawing tool. Many tools integrate the open-source Excalidraw npm package.

💻 SSG (Static Site Generator) Support

Direct, built-in support in major SSGs is less common, but you can usually achieve it by converting the Excalidraw file data (which is JSON) into a renderable format like SVG or PNG during the build process.

• Obsidian-based SSGs: Since Obsidian has such good Excalidraw integration, SSGs designed to publish Obsidian vaults often handle Excalidraw files:

  • Quartz: An open-source, fast SSG built for Obsidian. It has mechanisms to handle various Obsidian-specific elements, and often community plugins or configurations exist to ensure Excalidraw diagrams are correctly rendered when building the static site.
  • Obsidian Garden / Digital Garden SSGs: Many small, open-source SSGs built specifically for “Digital Gardens” (sites published from Obsidian/Markdown notes) will have community-contributed support for the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin’s output.

• General SSGs: For general SSGs like Hugo, Jekyll, or Next.js, the approach is typically:

  1. Save your Excalidraw file (.excalidraw).
  2. Use a script or build step (often involving the Excalidraw CLI) to convert the .excalidraw JSON into a static SVG or PNG file.
  3. Embed the resulting SVG/PNG image in your Markdown note, which the SSG then publishes.

Few Ways to run a Homelab

1. With a nice OSS: Ubuntu, Zorin OS, Linux Lite…

2. With whatever OS you have + containers like:

UmbrelOS x Homelab

Using UmbrelOS as Container to selfhost apps

Cosmos Server x HomeLab

Docker config 🐋 ↗

• https://github.com/crocofied/CoreControl
• https://github.com/vitodeploy/vito

Free and Self-Hosted Server Management Tool

• The PaaS ones:

https://jalcocert.github.io/JAlcocerT/selfhosted-server-paas/

DokPloy x VPS

Using UmbrelOS as Container to selfhost apps

Coolify x Pi

Source Code a Web App to serve md content via web/book and also downlodable as PDFs

Conclusion

Ive added PortMaster install as a script in the HomeLab repo, here:

./portmaster-install.sh

Probably having a VPS as compute backup is not a bad idea.

Neither is to review these selfhosting CLIs and monitoring tools.

And hetzner has been leveling up their game: https://docs.hetzner.com/

CX23 > CX22 in performance?

Pay only for the hours you use, if you have a server for less than a month. No minimum contract period required!

Keeping NS outside cloudflare and using the NGINX setup, instead of the Traefik one.

Random

2 years ago I put together couple of words with thoughts and snapshots that the world never got to see.

Now I have 3 ebooks ready to be consumed, while the world ends one more time

JAPAN JUST KILLED THE GLOBAL MONEY PRINTER AND NOBODY NOTICED

The most dangerous number in finance right now is 1.71%.

That’s Japan’s 10-year bond yield. Highest since 2008. Here’s why your retirement just got obliterated:

For 30 years, Japan printed infinity money at 0% rates… pic.twitter.com/b24yiOu5ON

— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) November 17, 2025

I started another ebook about servers/infra/selfhosting: because everything has potential failures

NEW - 1 WebApp to n eBooks

Source Code a Web App to serve md content via web/book and also downlodable as PDFs

Expect ,n’ to be:

1. Webpage creator: Because you can own your brand - DIY ofc
2. Homelabs/Servers
3. IoT
4. More expertise as I learn :)

Outages x Status x PlansB

Not only AWS will have outages.

But also cloudflare…and Github

Its curious that even X ressited the AWS outage, but not the CF one.

So that makes me think on the reliability of the wedding setup with R2.

And im glad I tried the captcha via CapJS here.

Cloudflare Turnstile is a user-friendly, privacy-focused alternative to CAPTCHA for protecting websites from bots and automated abuse.

If you have a NAT and use Cloudflare tunnels, maybe is time to try Pangolin as a Plan B.

ngrok, Pangolin,…

3. NetGoat

See also zoraxy or Pangolin

https://github.com/tobychui/zoraxy https://github.com/tobychui/zoraxy?tab=AGPL-3.0-1-ov-file#readme

General purpose (reverse) proxy and forwarding tool for networking noobs. Now written in Go!

Airpods vs Sony

The Sony- WF-1000XM3 and linux.

• https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods

GPL 3.0 | AirPods liberated from Apple’s ecosystem.

https://frantzroulet.com/blog/jekyll/update/2021/02/26/how_to_use_sony_wf-1000xm3_on_ubuntu_20.04_with_i3wm.html

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1269083/ubuntu-20-04-bluetooth-true-wireless-headphones-not-working-work-in-previous-v

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1139404/sony-noise-cancelling-headphones-wh-1000xm2-3-and-bluetooth-initial-autoconnec

The airpods pro worked out of the box though…

If you just made your HomeLab, consider any of these media tools: pairdrop or nextcloud

Omarchy

I was testing OS’s some time back.

And SteamOS recently here :)

When you think nothing can surprise you…

You get to know a new Arch based OS:

• https://omarchy.org/

That is done by…a racing driver?

And that same person is the creator of ruby on rails web app framework!

What?!

I downloaded the omarchy-3.2.0.iso of the OS and tried it via VM.

It took ~5min to complete the install.

Gaming and Linux

I got to know about another OS for linux gaming: https://bazzite.gg/

It seems that W11 is going all in with AI and at the same time gaming performance is going down the drain.

I guess is not too late to use a VM via Gnome Boxes to test any OS

Virtualization made simple: https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Boxes

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Boxes

https://jalcocert.github.io/JAlcocerT/selfhosted-apps-nov-2025/#thoughts-on-steamos-and-os-for-nas

For a general OS purposes, as of today I would:

• Use Lubuntu - As it requires just ~700mb of RAM
• Try ZorinOS if you are a regular user with good enough hardware but cant run W11

Selfh 2025 Results

People seem to be loving Immich and Nextcloud!

• https://selfh.st/survey/2025-results/

Who could have guessed, that donations are low: https://ko-fi.com/jalcocertech

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change

If you enjoy my homelab repo, see also:

#git clone https://github.com/JAlcocerT/Home-Lab
git clone https://github.com/atareao/self-hosted.git atareao

SelfHosting Best Practices

• https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1beoi4l/best_practices_for_selfhosted_services/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/index/

FAQ

https://bobpony.com/downloads/

• https://github.com/Abdenasser/neohtop

MIT | 💪🏻 Blazing-fast system monitoring for your desktop (built with Rust, Tauri & Svelte)

#https://github.com/Abdenasser/neohtop/releases/download/v1.2.0/NeoHtop_1.2.0_x86_64.AppImage
#neohtop

But as of now, It was not a smooth setup, so its not going to the monitoring docs.

How to run Windows Apps in Android

If what you are looking for is a way to run Windows Apps in new ways, you could also check:

• The winlator Source Code at Github
  • License: MIT ❤️

Android application for running Windows applications with Wine and Box86/Box64

I simply Love Cal

You can get started very quickly, create a cal.com meeting and embed it into your websites in few ways:

• https://awweso.me/booking-and-scheduling/

Improving HomeLab Security

Whatever you are deploying, specially if you are managing your own VPS…

Where to Deploy

A VPS Recap on Hetzner, DO to ship PoCs and more

About HomeLab Security | POST

BackUps x Privacy Apps x Private AI

1. Setup a Proxy with HTTPs

2. Proper SSH Keys

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "somemail@domain.ch"

ssh root@yourhetznerserverip

3. Create a non root user to run containers

Business Canvas

This is one of those entrepreneurship tools that I find useful: The business model canvas

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model_canvas

• https://leantime.io/mastering-business-model-a-guide-to-completing-the-lean-canvas-model/

Other services to deploy?

Interested to discover similar services that you can self-host with Docker? - Check this out: