Timestamps for Where to Begin episode of Linux Prepper. Enjoy, because I must limit to show notes to 4k characters max. Below are 6800 characters of notes!

(00:24) Happy 2025!

(00:34) Hungry Bogart interview on Linux Prepper origins and background on Medium. Will be discussed further on a future episode.

(01:00) Episode Overview

(01:45) Audience Feedback from previous episodes

What is Matrix and why do we have a Matrix chat. Join it here.

(02:50) Discussion forum now live for the podcast and eventually Living Cartoon Company, my theatrical work.

(03:20) SeaGL Gnu/Linux Conference from October

(08:00) There is more to this podcast than just technology in terms of computers. Also relates to making musical instruments, electronics, recipes, DIY, hardware

(09:15) My audience expectations is you want to learn more. You are someone who is into this. You are ready to learn more. You will be inspired to take notes and take initiative to learn things things discussed.

You feel inspired to do basic web searches like "Linux Password Manager" to learn more.
Markdown is how this info is being written for you right now. 🙂
Bullet Journaling, for handwritten notes
Password Managers are also a handy place to store useful notes. See previous episodes for more info.

Where to Begin in terms of Technology

(12:00) Everyone starts hosted. No shame in it. But, when would you try selfhosting at a local place on a device you own?

Encounter a limitation like sharing multi-terabytes of data, when my hosted storage is smaller.
I already have the hardware and want to learn.
This is your chance to build an internal network topology, using local services!
If you try this, you now have a "homelab" by setting up any old machine.
Give yourself a reason to learn open source. Start with a keyboard, monitor and mouse if you must.

(15:00) Basic services you can experiment with to begin your own homelab of internal devices

Avahi, mDNS for treating your device as hostname.local for printing, Samba and more with zero configuration.
- Edit avahi-daemon.conf with whatever stand-in hostname you want
DNS Server, popularly done with Adblockers like Pi-hole and Adguard Home, plus Unbound with a blocklist.
- Sync multiple failovers of these using Orbital Sync for Pi-hole or adguardhome-sync
- My personal preference is Adguard Home alongside Unbound and Adguardhome-sync.
DHCP Server (requires router access) to use something like the above services to set static routes and DHCP reservations for your devices in a saner manner.
I personally enjoying setting all of my device IP assignments based on MAC addresses.

Expanding beyond DNS and DHCP

(19:00) Buy a domain yourself using a service like Porkbun.com

or, try an open source, dynamic dns provider like duckdns.org

(19:30) Reverse Proxy to access your services with valid https, either publicly and/or locally only.

No more http warnings in the browser. <- nothing makes friends and family less interested in our service.
No more remembering IP addresses or port numbers.
Classier than simply using avahi as hostname.local:$port
- avahi still serves as a nice fallback
Local only https is totally doable thanks to DNS challenges. Your application doesn't have to be public.

There are tons of reverse proxies to choose from! I don't want to recommend one over another. Which do you prefer? All of these services are ones your friends and family will use, whether they know it or not.

(22:05) What services do you actually host for your friends and family? Let me know! podcast@james.network

State of the Podcast

(22:30) Looking into sponsors. You can support me on paypal directly for the moment.
(23:00) Podcasting 2.0 support is now part of the podcast. More info in the future.

If you use a supported app to listen, you can help me raise the 48k sats necessary to establish my own channel. I'm self-hosting Alby on a Pi.
(24:00) Now using studio monitors for reference in better recording and mixing the show.
Also purchased a license for mixing software I run on a dedicate Pi. Works awesome, while no longer crashing my laptop.
Let me know if levels and volume need more work. Thanks, and thank you for your support.

Help me spread the word about this show!

Follow from the Fediverse: Mastodon, Lemmy, Hubzilla, etc
Bluesky created, but I only just got on it.
Use Podcast Index, Apple Podcasts to listen. Or, use the rss feed directly.
Share to places like Facebook, Threads, Twitter and other places I'm not active. I'd prefer to focus on the show, as opposed to social media. Thank you!