Immutable Linux sounded bulletproof until I tried to use it
…It could have been any of a number of issues, but it wasn't anything to do with the hardware. I'm not picking on Bazzite, btw While Bazzite is the distro…
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Stop putting off VLANs in your homelab — Proxmox SDN makes them almost too easy
…troubleshooting. I've used them extensively on the LAN itself, splitting clients into pools. Security IP cameras are attached to one VLAN, guest clients are on another, and network infrastructure and hardware…
I moved everything to Proxmox and learned that fewer boxes doesn't mean more reliable
…Proxmox didn’t just help me replace hardware. It made me more willing to create a larger, busier lab than I would have tolerated with physical devices. Dedicated hardware still solves problems…
One tiny change made my local LLMs more useful than ChatGPT for real work
Ayush Pande Apr 12, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT Ayush Pande is a PC hardware and gaming writer. When he's not working on a new article, you can find him with…
The best cheap Linux-based desktop you can buy was never designed to run Linux
…Some people want full hardware freedom, broad distribution choice, and the comfort of boring compatibility. The M1 Mac mini offers excellent hardware for the money, but it is not the most open…
I replaced my smart home hub with a $120 mini PC, and my smart home finally feels responsive
…In the end, troubleshooting the code and hardware problems tested my patience several times. Yet, every hour I spent on that helped me learn how my smart home works. Besides building my…
I switched from powerline adapters to MoCA and should have done it years ago
…What should have been a plug-and-play network fix turned into days of troubleshooting, revealing that only some of my sockets could even connect between the two adapters. It might have…
I rebuilt my VS Code setup from scratch this year, and it's the fastest it's ever been
Ayush Pande May 13, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Ayush Pande is a PC hardware and gaming writer. When he's not working on a new article, you can find him with…
TrueNAS SCALE tried to do everything, so I gave it one job and moved the rest to Proxmox
Rich Edmonds Apr 10, 2026, 12:31 PM EDT Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He's been building…
Home Assistant freed me from the smart home brand wars, and now I buy whatever works
…Home Assistant gives me the freedom to buy outside one brand’s ecosystem, but it doesn’t magically turn bad hardware into good hardware. Now I treat cheap devices as experiments first…