It’s 14:00, December 24th, 90’s hip hop is playing, we had lunch early while the scorching summer heat isn’t quite enough to slow us down (any more), thanks to the privilege of having AC that keeps up. And since the sluggishness isn’t total yet, I came to my “bedroom-office” to write the first article in this series, where I smash my face against problem after problem trying to build a homelab, being honest, with no clear goal beyond: “learning as I go.”

The goal

The homelab idea started in early 2025, when jd, a friend from IT World, would share his progress with me — from a better grasp of networking to expanding his hardware knowledge across different angles: availability, resilience, etc. Concepts we used to talk about often with cloud in mind, but that now we had to figure out how to solve at the physical level.

While long hours of studying, debating, researching, doing leetcode katas or architecture went by, his homelab kept moving forward, while mine, for various reasons, stayed just an idea for the future. Until December 2025, when, on Christmas Eve, after much deliberation, I decided to give myself a gift. Those close to me know I don’t usually spend money “just because,” but this time I told myself I had to put things into practice, face new challenges, and above all, learn new things.

The series, the blog

Throughout my life I’ve written quite a bit — a lot about some things, very little about others — but the tech world has slowly been eating away at some areas I genuinely enjoyed, like this one. Actually, shoutout to our esteemed Fulanosaurio, who professionally diagnosed me via a Discord soundpad as being in a state of: brainrot. So, after the well-deserved punishment for being a lunatic who kept posting AI-made stuff, I had the crazy idea of, in this 21st century, going against the current and writing things myself.

The homelab

As I mentioned at the start, the goal wasn’t clear. What was, and still is, clear is that I want to keep learning, and in that spirit, I made some fairly ridiculous decisions that, in my completely warped view of reality, are going to be useful.

1. The purchase. I looked around different countries, different shipping options, etc., only to end up buying locally because of the excessive customs taxes on a device that, at best, weighs 1kg. It ended up in my hands a few days after making the tough decision (5 minutes), with a Dell 3040 Core i5 6th gen, 16GB, 256GB SSD, Refurbished — refurbished, of course. Sure, it had some limitations, but I liked it a lot compared to other options where, for the same price, you’d get a potato with a hamster for a CPU. At least this Dell felt like an honest, humble option to start with.

2. Post-purchase. I started weighing more options. My interest was initially centered on home automation, but given the timing, plus the fact that it’s not that easy to get specific hardware in my country, I had to circle back on the original idea. Honestly, it didn’t take me long to decide — after being a PC nerd for so long, I felt enlightened. “I’ll build something to play PS2 games in the living room.” That meant some placement issues, new network cable runs, plus setting up a VM specifically for this… Coming up soon: performance problems too.

The homelab: First steps

The start was simple, but I was more excited than an otaku when the latest One Piece chapter drops (I get that feeling). I had an old pendrive, Proxmox downloaded, and Rufus doing its magic. Installing it on the mini PC was easy, start to finish. From there, the “problems” began:

Note that I wrote “problems” in quotes on purpose — they weren’t really problems per se, more like user ignorance. Among the issues I ran into were two, three:

1. I couldn’t connect to my Proxmox machine’s IP. It kept throwing connection refused. Until I noticed this only happened on Chrome. But it wasn’t frustrating — it was more like the spark of curiosity again. I had to figure out the difference between browsers hitting the same IP:PORT. Googling, I found so much information it was overwhelming. And yes, googling, like old school, because even with well-crafted prompts, the free-tier AI, on Christmas Eve, seemed more in the mood to make a fruit salad than to give me something short and concrete. Though I’ll admit, AI is excellent — it’s also the one to blame for my soundpad diagnosis.

   

2. Cables. I have a massive mess of cables, which I’ve mulled over several times without ever reaching a consensus with myself on what to do about it. The problem isn’t really the distance from devices to the power outlet; the problem is that I need to be able to shuffle around how these move — sometimes I need one laptop to take priority over another. The mini PC, on the other hand, can go anywhere — actually, it won’t even be here (remember, its dedicated spot will be the living room, to play retro games like a proper old man).

   

3. RetroArch — some performance issues, PS2 core crashes, were among the issues that showed up on the first VM I spun up inside Proxmox alongside a Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. However, those crashes disappeared with the Nintendo 64 ParaLLEIN N64 core, so, enlightened once again, I went hunting for a classic or two for the trial by fire.

The homelab: First milestone completed

At this point, proving Doctorsauriodon’t right about my diagnosis, I honestly don’t know how to wrap up a post I’m writing without using our magnificent job-stealing tools (AI); though, humbly, I doubt they could’ve been just as sarcastic. That said, the next steps for the homelab are:

1. Move the mini PC to the living room, add a couple of joysticks for a proper Mortal Kombat, Super Mario, or Crash tournament… The important thing here is that the mini PC ends up far from my bedroom-office, to make the HDMI connection to the shared living room TV easier, while on the same network, other things keep cooking… As the new generations would say: let him cook.

2. A new node, dedicated to IoT, home automation, sensor-based automation. Honestly, I’m not sure what yet — it might be something related to watering plants, because at my place we have an exorbitant amount of them, and while for some people watering is therapeutic, for me it’s pure torture.

3. A new node, focused on AppSec, possibly related to alarm devices, surveillance cameras — the idea here is basically to buy the stuff and program it myself. It doesn’t make much sense to buy a “smart” camera; the whole point of the homelab is for a camera to send data to my own server. I decide what to do with that information.

Special mention to our tilted friend. Well, my work here is done.

And given the news of «what a strange word» the acquisition of new streaming platforms, I find myself fully obligated to say goodbye, until further notice, quoting someone I really don’t need to name:

“That’s all, folks.”