Self-Hosting

A wildcard SSL cert for *.example.com from Let’s Encrypt covers every one-level subdomain. You get one through the DNS-01 challenge, or, since February 2026, through the new DNS-PERSIST-01 challenge that skips per-renewal DNS edits. One wildcard cert replaces the per-service certs you’d otherwise juggle behind your reverse proxy.

Why Wildcard Certificates and When You Need Them

If you run three subdomains, single certs work fine. Each one gets its own HTTP-01 challenge, Certbot handles renewal, and life is simple. Once you pass 10 or 15 subdomains, the chore list grows. Every new service needs its own cert request, its own renewal entry, and its own way to break. A wildcard cert folds all of that into one.

ZFS gives you stronger data integrity. Its RAIDZ layouts are battle-tested, it checksums data end to end, and it has a proven record on NAS systems. Btrfs is the better pick for single-disk desktops and laptops. It ties tightly into the Linux kernel, compresses data on the fly, and rolls back from snapshots. You get that protection without the RAM cost ZFS demands. The right answer depends on your hardware, your workload, and how many disks you have.

A fanless home server under $300 is real in 2026. Using an Intel N150 or N305 mini PC - the Beelink EQ12 Pro or GMK NucBox G3 - you get a passively cooled machine that draws 6-15W under load, makes zero noise, and handles a full stack of self-hosted services: Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, Nextcloud, Immich, and a WireGuard VPN all running simultaneously without a single fan spinning.

For self-hosting on Linux in 2026, Podman is the better default. It has no daemon, runs rootless out of the box, and its Quadlet unit files make containers behave like any other systemd service on your box. I say that as someone whose own stack still runs on Docker . After years of reading that Podman is lighter, faster, and safer, I installed it next to Docker and measured the difference on my own hardware. Some claims held up: rootless Podman with pasta networking (Podman’s user-mode network layer) beat rootful Docker’s bridge on download throughput in every run. There is also no daemon holding memory between deployments. One claim did not survive: the often-repeated “Podman starts containers about 50 ms faster” was a statistical tie on my machine.

Sway is the most stable, battle-tested tiling compositor for developers who want an i3-like setup with zero surprises. Hyprland offers the flashiest animations and deepest customization. It also demands more tinkering. COSMIC from System76 is the best pick if you want a polished, full desktop with tiling built in, instead of stitching a compositor together by hand.

The right pick depends on how you actually work. How many monitors do you run? Do you want to set up everything by hand? How much patience do you have for the odd glitch? Those answers map straight to the splits across design, display handling, tiling models, plugins, and real-world stability.

The consumer SBC market in 2026 is not dead. It is just no longer what it was sold as. Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Rock Pi, and the rest of the single-board computer crowd now ship 70-80% of their units to industrial customers. Think factory automation, digital signage, point-of-sale terminals, and medical devices. The $35 computer that was meant to put a hackable Linux machine in every teenager’s bedroom is now more likely bolted inside a mall vending machine.