I write technical posts with the intention of either documenting problems I have solved or showing off stuff I built.
My passion is self-hosting in my home lab with these important goals:
- **Data sovereignty, privacy and autonomy**: Nowadays our data is increasingly in the hands of companies. This is problematic because these companies have but one goal: to make money, oftentimes using the data you entrust them. Worse still, these companies are not scared of barring you from your own data (see [this link](https://archive.is/saQXe) for example). These facts have made it abundantly clear we need to have full control over our own data.
- **Expanding knowledge for my professional life**: Diving into new technologies without the risk of breaking important systems is in my opinion one of the best methods to learn. Actually, breaking things is the best way to learn! Stuff breaks (usually) because you don't fully understand it, and these failures are therefore very valuable.
- **Fun**: 😀
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the most important principle I adhere to when building my home lab.
With IaC, all (digital) infrastructure and systems are defined in code that can be automatically rolled out.
Ansible is probably the most used IaC tool out there, but it has a huge problem: it suffers from configuration drift.
You can create a task in Ansible to install a package, but if you remove this task, the package remains.
At this point, your configuration does not reflect reality anymore.
What is the solution to this configuration drift? Nix and NixOS!
NixOS will always make sure you machine is in the exact state you define in your configuration.
My current Linux systems now all run NixOS and I have no intention of ever going back!
