If you run anything at home that is always on — a Linux box, an old workstation, a mini PC, a laptop quietly serving files — you are running a server. And a server that is reachable, unpatched and forgotten is a problem waiting to happen. Last updated: May 27, 2026 This is the hub page for everything on this blog about building and securing a Linux home server . Instead of one giant 10,000-word wall of text, it is organised as a path: start at the top, follow the links into the detailed guides, and come back here when you want the next step. Whether you are hardening a cheap homelab box or turning a retired enterprise machine into a homelab monster, this is the map. New here? You may also want the short Start Here page and a little context about this blog . 1. Pick the hardware (cheap or ridiculous, both work) A home server does not need to be expensive. It can be an old desktop, a thin client, or a retired workstation found for the price of a coffee. For the budget...
Sometimes the best home server is not a tiny low-power box. Last updated: May 25, 2026 Sometimes it is a massive workstation that used to live in a professional environment, has more expansion than most modern desktops, and can now be found for reasonable money on the used market. That is how I ended up using an HP Z840 Workstation as my new main workstation and homelab machine. This is not a small server. It is not a Raspberry Pi. It is not a silent mini PC. It is a proper dual-socket workstation platform with ECC DDR4 memory, lots of PCIe expansion, multiple storage options, serious cooling, and enough capacity to run programming workloads, Linux experiments, VirtualBox VMs and home lab services without feeling cramped. My unit originally came with an Intel Xeon E5-2650 v3 . I replaced it with an Intel Xeon E5-2640 v4 that cost me around 3€ including shipping . That is the kind of ridiculous used enterprise hardware upgrade that makes homelab life interesting. The...