todotoro

Not the poster, but I kinda get this sentiment. For my laptop and things that I do for work, I prefer Podman. Better security posture out of the box, and I’m typically crafting my own pods to work a specific way.

But, if I am just trying to start up some app/service and I’m following the GitHub documentation with the project…I want to just copy and paste and there isn’t a 1-for-1 for docker compose. Podman does have an alias package so you can say docker on the cli, but the “compose” part of it is not as good if I just want something to run without dicking with it.

So in short, if I’m making something with a container or want to have hands on control, I prefer Podman. If I’m running something “off the shelf”, like just running someone’s docker compose files files from their Github, I’m just running Docker man.

I’ve dabbled in VyOS and Opnsense, but ran Pfsense for close to a decade (which is basically Opnsense, but more proprietary). Between the two, I think Opnsense is likely your better option.

Updates: There is some nuance, but VyOS doesn’t give you a LTS release so you will be taking quarterly upgrades to the latest. You are more or less a beta tester.

Opnsense has I guess one could consider “normal” releases with their community edition and is pretty easy to upgrade. You don’t really expect breaking changes.

Tools: CLI is typically faster on VyOS (once you skill up) than the GUI for Opnsense. But Opnsense also provides CLI options to interact with it, so if you decide you want that later on you have it. Both have APIs to interact with too for automation later.

Firewall: VyOS is using netfilter underneath, aka things you may be familiar with like iptables and nftables. It’s a fine firewall option, and is similar to what you could find in a normal Linux install (more on that later).

Opnsense I believe, uses the PF package (that’s also where the original pfsense got its name). This is a package for FreeBSD, and in my 10+ years of using it, it has been reliable.

Hardware: VyOS being based on Linux will support more hardware out of the box.

Opnsense being based on FreeBSD may run into edge cases of not using your hardware correctly. (I had a thing on Pfsense (also FreeBSD) where it didn’t like my built-in NIC and would flap constantly. I gave up trying to use it and used an external NIC instead)

Opinion: Honestly, if I was stuck with just these two as my choices I would probably lean toward Opnsense. It is more popular in homelab community, and there are many many guides on how to manage it.

Another option: You could also just using any other Linux distro and build up the firewall yourself. In the datacenter, it is very common to find big switches or firewalls simply running Debian on them with whatever firewall package the admin wants. It’s also a great learning experience.

Offbeat option: Presented with the same inquiry as you, I actually switched to OpenWRT. Many people will tell you that it’s just for APs or Routers, but I have been using it for my managed switches and my main firewall for about half a year now. OpenWRT is just Linux underneath, and you get the same CLI access as you would with a normal Linux distro. Plus you do get the option to use LuCI to mange it in the GUI.

It’s not as shiny as the *senses but, it is certainly just as capable for this role in a homelab. Remember when I said I was on pfSense for years? I was able to port all of my firewall rules, VLANs, etc into OpenWRT just fine.

I’m conflicted by this post. On one hand, I appreciate another distro to learn about (thank you). But anytime Hyprland comes up, I am always reminded of that dev and community being transphobes/racists.

https://itsfoss.com/news/framework-hyprland-sponsorship/

I’ve never looked at Hyprland and felt the need to switch from Sway, maybe thats just because I’ve been a user of it for long enough now. Years ago I read that Hyprland handles Teams screen shares better but I’m not sure.

A Pi 4 can do quite a bit. Maybe start off with some Docker apps. Try and host PiHole for ad blocking at home?

Video games come to mind. You could probably figure out how to host a game server of their choice (think something like Minecraft) so him and his friends can play. Docker is a nice shortcut for that, and you also get to sprinkle in some networking knowledge too for opening ports and such.

If games are off the table, could try to figure out some hardware to interact with. Having some sort of robot that you can control with an API could be fun.

On the line with hardware, you can get a raspberry pi, and try to work with him to blink an LED via Scratch or Python. Then work to something even bigger.

If typing is a struggle you could do typeracer or something like that to figure out who can type faster.

You could build a basic website together with some CSS and HTML. Make like, a fan site for his favorite band (or whatever hes into). Maybe he wants to make something for his friends to see.

Or, ask them if there is something theyve wanted to know how it works…then build some sort of project using it.

So, I bought a Pinetime with tariffs applied to go with GrapheneOS. It came to me about $50 USD shipped. For that price, I would do it again if it broke.

My needs are very basic, I can control music, see notifications, and get my heart rate on a graph when I work out. I only switched to this from Sensor Watch, simply because of the heart rate sensor.

Speaking of, you would be surprised what you could make a Sensor Watch do for you with no connectivity to your phone. I had totp for work, chess, and sunset/sunrise times as well as a onboard temp sensor.

Suffice to say, I think nowadays Ill readily pay more for FOSS with less features than something else just on principle. So I wouldn’t let what could be conceived as a “bad deal” stop you if your convictions are strong enough.

Happy to oblige your request stranger.

Softserve is perfectly usable, especially if your needs are more basic (its for you, no need for PRs, etc). The only gotcha is you’ll need a ed55219 key to use it.

It has been stable for me the last few years I’ve known about it. Ive run it as a container of some sort for that entire time. It’s definitely still maturing though, with more features added semi frequently.

I use it for literally everything I want self hosted, which is like 7-8 git repos for different things.

If you decide to go the Kubernetes route, you can try k3sup to bootstrap your VMs k3s, it a nice half step abstraction between Ansible and running curl yourself:

https://github.com/alexellis/k3sup

I’ve landed on k3s as my k8s distro in my environment for a number of reasons. It seems to have the “mindshare” of selfhosters, and theres lots of k3s documentation to peruse. I also really like that you can preload manifest files if you do decide to use Ansible, which makes cluster deploys that much more organized.

If you want to go a little off beat, you could try “Canonical K8s (not Microk8s)” as a snap. That worked REALLY well, and lets you do cool shit like “k8s enable loadbalancer” to automatically enable whole components for you, if you just want to focus on “consuming” Kubernetes instead of building it. I did notice a little overhead doing it as a snap, but my Proxmox node that runs the VM is purposely low spec (Celeron quad core if you believe it, 7 tdp tho)…so your hardware wouldn’t likely notice a difference.

https://documentation.ubuntu.com/canonical-kubernetes/release-1.32/snap/tutorial/getting-started/

If youre doing Proxmox already, if you don’t already have a VM template and/or Terraform/OpenTofu with Proxmox operator…it may help to tool on that too. Easier to destroy/build VMs when you get frustrated.

I am a container evangelist, I find excuses to convert my jobs into Kubernetes workloads, and I frequently use the likes of podman for one off apps/processes and development. I use Flatpak frequently to isolate dependencies for the likes of Steam and Heroic.

I really wanted to like Bazzite or Bluefin, but I can’t deal with the overhead from the rpm os-tree updates. I would frequently notice hitches for my use case (sunshine streaming), and the hoops I had to do to configure Nvidia drivers (for it to then not work as good as other distros) was tiresome.

I went back to Arch (EndeavourOS), and I improved sunshine performance and had a driver that worked with less fiddling.

I’m saying all this because, while I’m glad to see any Linux distro grow, I hope it starts delivering what it says on the tin eventually without compromises that I experienced. Markering on it being immutable and container focused is true, but I dont see the benefit (aside from more stability which as others pointed out, is already stable is most cases)?. Right now, its a simple to configure (assuming most defaults work for your setup) distro that is finding a growing niche amongst some users (obviously by the data shown). And thats good enough for now at least.

Yea, I figured thats why most people end up dual booting. It’s not a judgment or anything.

FWIW, I get around this by either using Geforce Now to stream the game that uses it or simply not playing the game lol. It’s not worth dealing with Windows for me.

My friends and I don’t usually play the kind of games that use Anti-Cheat so its not an issue.

It always sucks dual booting in my experience. It’s an exercise in balancing maintenance and disk space management between two operating systems. You’re always likely patching if you actively switch between them.

I think it’s usually better to choose one and virtualize the other. I’d rather choose Linux + Windows VM than the other way around.