Changelog & Friends

The state of homelab tech (2026)

Listen Later

Techno Tim joins Adam to dive deep into the state of homelab’ing in 2026. Hardware is scarce and expensive due to the AI gold rush, but software has never been better. From unleashing Claude on your UDM Pro to building custom Proxmox CLIs, they explores how AI is transforming what’s possible in the homelab. Tim declares 2026 the “Year of Self-Hosted Software” while Adam reveals his homelab’s secret weapons: DNSHole (a Pi-hole replacement written in Rust) and PXM (a Proxmox automation CLI).

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 8 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

  • Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
  • Tiger Data – Postgres for Developers, devices, and agents The data platform trusted by hundreds of thousands from IoT to Web3 to AI and more.
  • Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
  • Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

    • Featuring:

    • Techno Tim – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
    • Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

    Show Notes:

    People
    • Techno Tim - Tim Stewart’s website, YouTube channel, and documentation hub
    • Crosstalk Solutions - Chris’s channel, mentioned for building custom Ubiquiti API tools
      • Virtualization & Infrastructure
      • Proxmox VE - Open-source virtualization platform for VMs and containers
      • TrueNAS - Enterprise-grade open-source storage operating system built on ZFS
      • HexOS - Consumer-friendly NAS OS built on TrueNAS (in development)
      • Proxmox VE Helper Scripts - Community-maintained scripts for easy LXC and VM deployment
        • Self-Hosted Software
        • Paperless-NGX - Self-hosted document management system with OCR
        • Paperless-GPT - AI-powered enhancement for Paperless-NGX using LLMs
        • Ollama - Run large language models locally on your own hardware
        • Open WebUI - Self-hosted web interface for interacting with local LLMs
        • Plex - Media server for organizing and streaming your personal media library
        • Home Assistant - Open-source home automation platform
        • Pi-hole - Network-wide ad blocking via DNS filtering
          • Document Intelligence & RAG
          • Dockling - IBM’s open-source document parsing library for AI/RAG pipelines
          • PaddleOCR - Multi-language OCR toolkit for document recognition
            • AI & Agents
            • Claude - Anthropic’s AI assistant, used for homelab automation in this episode
            • OpenCode - Open-source AI coding agent (mentioned as potential homelab tool)
            • Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Protocol for connecting AI models to external tools and data
              • Networking
              • Ubiquiti - Enterprise networking gear popular with homelabbers (UDM Pro, UniFi)
              • Tailscale - Zero-config VPN for secure networking between devices
                • Container & Orchestration
                • Docker - Container platform for packaging and running applications
                • Kubernetes - Container orchestration for managing containerized workloads
                • Fly.io - Platform for running containers close to users globally
                  • Monitoring & Observability
                  • Grafana - Open-source analytics and visualization platform
                  • Prometheus - Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit
                    • Security & Authentication
                    • Bitwarden - Open-source password manager (self-hostable)
                    • Authelia - Open-source authentication and authorization server
                      • Databases
                      • MariaDB - Community-developed fork of MySQL
                      • Redis - In-memory data store for caching and messaging
                      • PostgreSQL - Advanced open-source relational database
                        • Hardware Mentioned
                        • Intel Optane - Ultra-low latency storage drives (discontinued but prized for ZFS special vdevs)
                        • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 - GPU used for Plex transcoding and local AI inference
                          • Concepts & Techniques
                          • ZFS Special Vdevs - ZFS feature for accelerating metadata and small file operations
                          • PCIe Bifurcation - Splitting a PCIe slot to support multiple NVMe drives
                          • Medallion Architecture - Bronze/Silver/Gold data lake pattern discussed for document ETL

                            • Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

                            ...more
                            View all episodesView all episodes
                            Download on the App Store
                            Changelog & FriendsBy Changelog Media
                            • 5
                            • 5
                            • 5
                            • 5
                            • 5

                            5

                            2 ratings

                            More shows like Changelog & Friends

                            View all
                            The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

                            The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

                            288 Listeners

                            Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

                            Making Sense with Sam Harris

                            26,396 Listeners

                            The WAN Show by Linus Tech Tips

                            The WAN Show

                            1,189 Listeners

                            Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats by Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski - Full Stack JavaScript Web Developers

                            Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

                            990 Listeners

                            Darknet Diaries by Jack Rhysider

                            Darknet Diaries

                            8,091 Listeners

                            CoRecursive: Coding Stories by Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer

                            CoRecursive: Coding Stories

                            189 Listeners

                            Practical AI by Practical AI LLC

                            Practical AI

                            216 Listeners

                            All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

                            All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

                            10,213 Listeners

                            Deep Questions with Cal Newport by Cal Newport

                            Deep Questions with Cal Newport

                            1,334 Listeners

                            Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

                            Dwarkesh Podcast

                            555 Listeners

                            The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

                            The Ezra Klein Show

                            16,446 Listeners

                            Honestly with Bari Weiss by The Free Press

                            Honestly with Bari Weiss

                            8,533 Listeners

                            Oxide and Friends by Oxide Computer Company

                            Oxide and Friends

                            67 Listeners

                            Changelog News by Changelog Media

                            Changelog News

                            14 Listeners

                            The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz

                            The Pragmatic Engineer

                            75 Listeners