LINUX Unplugged

We rebuild a small office network around Linux, with an Unplugged twist and real-world constraints. Things don't go quite as expected...
Sponsored By:
Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps.

Support LINUX Unplugged
Links:
💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
PlanetNix 2026 — Where Nix Builders Come Together
SCaLE 23x | Registration — Get 40% off registration with promo code "UNPLG"
GEEKOM IT13 Mini PC 2026
OpenWrt One
Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus-E
Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 — An updated Zigbee and Thread chip gives it the highest performance available, while providing a rock-solid, stable network.
SYMFONISK Sonos WiFi bookshelf speaker — The speaker is a collaboration between IKEA and Sonos, so it easily integrates with other products from Sonos.
IKEA SYMFONISK - Home Assistant — Support for devices by IKEA SYMFONISK in Home Assistant is provided by the Sonos integration.
OpenCode — The open-source AI coding agent.
OpenCode on GitHub
[email protected]
Actual — A local-first personal finance app.
Pocket ID — A simple and easy-to-use OIDC provider that allows users to authenticate with their passkeys to your services.
Pick: Pocket TTS — A high quality TTS that gives your CPU a voice.
Pocket TTS on GitHub
Pick: WebView Kiosk — Turn your Android device into a locked-down web page in fullscreen mode.
webview-kiosk on GitHub

The storage apocalypse has arrived. An old friend drops by to talk survival strategies as prices explode, and we pitch our own unapologetically 90s approach to stretching storage.
Sponsored By:
Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

CrowdHealth: Discover a Better Way to Pay for Healthcare with Crowdfunded Memberships. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using UNPLUGGED.

Support LINUX Unplugged
Links:
💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
PlanetNix 2026 — Where Nix Builders Come Together
Planet Nix 2026: Call for Proposals
SCaLE 23x | Registration
LinuxFest Northwest 2026: Call for Speakers
Michael Tunnell - YouTube
Destination Linux - YouTube
TuxDigital
LINUX Unplugged 596: Perilously Pontificated Predictions
Phison CEO: SSD "Pricing Apocalypse" to Continue Through 2027
HDD Prices Spike as AI Infrastructure and China’s PC Push Collide
2025 Cloud Pricing Trends: Big Three Shake Up Storage Costs
Storage Apocalypse: Why SSDs and HDDs Are Becoming Impossibly Expensive
Jensen Huang Flagged Data Storage as the Next AI Bottleneck
Manufacturer Recertified Drives - ServerPartDeals.com
Hard Disk Prices (US)
Storage Price Tracker
RackRat - eBay Rackmount Server Deal Finder
r/HomelabSales$£€ - Reddit
Smart Buy 10 Pack Bd-r Dl 50gb 6X Blu-ray Double Layer Recordable Disc
BlueVault — A top-quality TUI app to manage Blu-ray cold storage archives on Linux.
Pick: Kopia — Cross-platform backup tool for Windows, macOS & Linux with fast, incremental backups, client-side end-to-end encryption, compression and data deduplication. CLI and GUI included.
Kopia Repository Server
Pick: PowerISO — Create, Burn, Mount, Edit, Compress, Encrypt, Split, Extract ISO file, ISO/BIN converter, Virtual Drive
PowerISO on Flathub
Pick: CDEmu — CDemu is a software suite designed to emulate an optical drive and disc on the Linux operating system.
Tellico — Collection management software, free and simple.

We unleash a networking monitoring tool to spot new devices, track changes in real time, and fire alerts straight into Home Assistant, MQTT, and your phone.
Sponsored By:
Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

CrowdHealth: Discover a Better Way to Pay for Healthcare with Crowdfunded Memberships. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using UNPLUGGED.

Support LINUX Unplugged
Links:
💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
Planet Nix 2026: Call for Proposals @ Sessionize.com
SCaLE 23x | Registration
NetAlert X — Network intruder and presence detector. Scans for devices connected to your network and alerts you if new and unknown devices are found.
NetAlertX Docs
NetAlertX GitHub
NetAlertX docker-compose.yml
NixOS OCI Config for NetAlertX
Home Assistant - NetAlertX Docs — NetAlertX comes with MQTT support, allowing you to show all detected devices as devices in Home Assistant. It also supplies a collection of stats, such as number of online devices.
home assistant mqtt documentation
ntfy.sh — Send push notifications to your phone via PUT/POST
Mosquitto - An open source MQTT broker
Pi-hole – Network-wide Ad Blocking
ESPresense
mkellyxp/nixbook: LICENSE? - Issue #55
Choosing a License - Find the Perfect Open Source License for Your Project
License Selector - OpenLicr
LicenseHub - Open Source License Tools Platform
Open Source Licenses Explained: A Comparison
GitHub - ErikMcClure/bad-licenses — A compendium of absurd "open-source" licenses.
Podverse Alpha
Podcasting 2.0 Episode 246: Crap Trap — Adam & Dave are joined by Mitch and Archie of Podverse fame
Pick: MQTT — Your All-in-one MQTT Client Toolbox
MQTTX GitHub
MQTT X on Flathub
Pick: mqtt5-explorer — MQTT5 Explorer is a simple yet feature-rich client to visualize data of any MQTT broker.
MQTT5 Explorer on Flathub
Pick: Unify — Unify is a web app aggregator built with Qt 6, Qt WebEngine, and Kirigami
Unify on Flathub
Pick: web-app-hub — A Web App Manager, written in rust with GTK and beautiful Adwaita.
Web App Hub on Flathub
Pick: Home-manager Webapps — Home-manager configuration file to get webapps in the system menu on a NixOS system

We make our big Linux predictions for 2026, but first, we score how we did for 2025.
Sponsored By:
Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps.

CrowdHealth: Discover a Better Way to Pay for Healthcare with Crowdfunded Memberships. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using UNPLUGGED.
Unraid: A powerful, easy operating system for servers and storage. Maximize your hardware with unmatched flexibility.

Support LINUX Unplugged
Links:
💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
LinuxFest Northwest 2026: Call for Speakers
The Launch 🚀: Nature Chose Violence
PewDiePie - I installed Linux (so should you)
James Lee - How I Broke up with Adobe
Linux surpasses 5% market share on US desktops for the first time
It is finally the year of Linux on the Desktop: free OS reaches 5% market share
Introducing the Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant
ADHD is Awesome: A Guide To (Mostly) Thriving With ADHD: Holderness, Penn, Holderness, Kim, Edward Hallowell: 9781400338610
Pick: eilmeldung TUI RSS Reader — A terminal-based RSS reader built on the news-flash backend.
Pick: Zbridge — zBridge is an online bridge club where you can learn and play bridge. It is a full bridge platform with multiple features.
Zbridge flatpak source
Pick: Cavalier — Visualize audio with CAVA

The Great Holiday Homelab Special! Where our community brought their absolute best, from budget busters to beautiful disasters. Plus, a boosties celebration! Grab an eggnog and join us as we attempt to choose this year's winners.
Sponsored By:
Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps.

CrowdHealth: Discover a Better Way to Pay for Healthcare with Crowdfunded Memberships. Join CrowdHealth to get started today for $99 for your first three months using UNPLUGGED.
Unraid: A powerful, easy operating system for servers and storage. Maximize your hardware with unmatched flexibility.

Support LINUX Unplugged
Links:
💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM