Thanks to our sponsor Bitdefender! Try their powerful Scam Protection free for 90 days: https://bitdefend.me/90Linus #Bitdefender A homelab isn't a scary server rack humming in a basement - it's just a computer you own, quietly running the services you'd normally rent from the cloud. We break down what you can actually run on one, what hardware to run it on, and how to start without wrecking your power bill or getting hacked. Whether you want to kill your subscriptions, take back your data, or pick up real tech skills, this is where you start. Thanks to Riley’s favorite dad Jeff Geerling for helping with this video - https://www.youtube.com/@JeffGeerling Leave a reply with your requests for future episodes. ► SHOP OUR PRODUCTS: https://lttstore.com ► GET A VPN: https://www.piavpn.com/TechQuickie ► GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ON FLOATPLANE: https://lmg.gg/lttfloatplane ► SPONSORS, AFFILIATES, AND PARTNERS: https://lmg.gg/partners Chapters --------------------------------- 00:00 - What is a Homelab? 00:51 - Why Build One? (Privacy & Control) 01:23 - Cool Services You Can Run 02:05 - Choosing the Right Hardware 03:09 - The Role of Linux 03:36 - Managing Multiple Apps (Docker & Proxmox) 04:40 - Sponsor: Bitdefender 05:19 - Security Rule #1: Don’t Open Ports 06:03 - Security Rule #2: The 3-2-1 Backup Method 06:57 - 5 Steps to Get Started 07:34 - Don’t Be Afraid to Break Things
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now if only storage prices weren't absolutely insane...
The algorithm speaks to me
Armadillo
Anything can be a homelab if you're brave enough.
Never leave the battery in the laptop! They can become very swollen and spicy, and if it's shoved in a corner somewhere, you may not even see it happen!
And as soon as this catches on they'll figure out how to outlaw homelabs
6:35 bold assumption that I have a house...in this economy
DVD/Blu-ray disc are really good media backups often overlooked in 2026. Easy to have an offsite copy on disc at a friend/family's place.
Me, knowing full well what a homelab is, as a member of r/homelab with a janked together server rack at home, but still watching with great interest: 😮
We need more about this topic on the main LTT channel! 👏👏
For anyone seirious, they skipped a important OS. Truenas. Its almost a complete all in one.
My homelab is literally an old gaming laptop behind my TV with a drive bay. I run local Ai, jellyfin, my own search engine, phone and computer backups and many more services. If you have an old laptop laying arround doing nothing the hardest part is starting. After a couple of days when you're familiar with containers and basic shell commands you're pretty much 90% of the way there.
Love Jeff's shirt. So true.
0:24 don't underestimate the power draw in some cases, especially depending how your homelab and/or NAS is setup and if you're using a dedicated NAS bay or desktop PC. Here, 1 kWh of power is €0,40 and a decent homelab + Nas can easily draw an average of 100W. That's let's say 2.5 kWh a day or 900+ kWh a year, which is €360 a year in power.
They completely left out the power creep part of having a home lab. Go ahead and set up that mini PC. It'll be all good running your smart home devices, until you decide you want to host your own full-quality media server. Then you'll realize that the 512GB SSD it came with is going to run out of space, FAST. Then you'll realize that you don't have any redundancy so if that mini PC dies, everything on it goes bye-bye too. Then you'll realize that a 1GbE network isn't nearly good enough to host multiple 4K streams inside your home. Then you'll realize that if the mini PC has to transcode any 4K video, it's just going to die somewhere around 4m13s into the movie. Then you'll realize, Tailscale is just a fancy UI and some provisioning tools layered on top of Wireguard so why not just host Wireguard yourself? Then you'll realized that you definitely need some sort of battery back up for your home lab. It's exhausting... but fun!
We are running freeBSD with this one 🗣🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Impeccable timing ! I started my homelab journey two months ago. I combined two Dell low price hardware config with each 8go of RAM and et 500go et a spare 2.5 inch 750go, all HDD of course. Managed to get an Intel i5 4670 that works with the motherboards. With that i started hosting local file drive and local Minecraft server, on Truenas OS. But i didn't know how to safely open my servers to access them from the internet.
Jeff Geerling Booster Squad LET'S GO
As somone who has not much experience with homelab, inorder to achive the 1 in 3,2,1 backup security you would need to store offsite. for the average person how would you ahcive that without paying a third party.
Great video, but now the only ones who can afford storage are data centers.