The desk / continuation
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A comprehensive 25-part engineering series on transforming an old Windows laptop into a full-featured bare-metal home server without installing WSL, Linux, or virtual machines—hosting Caddy, Cloudflare Tunnels, OwnCloud OCIS, Jellyfin, Ollama, n8n, and more.
EngineeringPrepare your bare-metal Windows server. Learn how to completely uninstall WSL/Ubuntu and reclaim disk space, harden Windows power settings for 24/7 uptime, manage forced update reboots, configure auto-login, and wrap applications as native services using NSSM.
EngineeringSet up high-performance native PostgreSQL and MariaDB databases. Integrate backups with MinIO or Cloudflare R2 (10GB/month free tier) to replace paid RDS and S3 options.
EngineeringEliminate SaaS subscription limits. Deploy Authelia for single sign-on (SSO) and Umami (on SQLite) for web traffic analytics.
EngineeringGather system and container performance metrics using Prometheus, Windows Exporter, Loki, and Grafana for real-time visualization and alerting.
EngineeringEnable remote server access and create a private overlay mesh network for all user devices at zero cost using Tailscale's free tier.
EngineeringConfigure a photo library sync (Lychee or OCIS Photos) to backup mobile media directly to the server's 1TB HDD, bypassing monthly cloud storage fees.
EngineeringBuild a cross-platform password sync system using KeePassXC and WebDAV (via OwnCloud OCIS) for maximum security and zero ongoing costs.
EngineeringSchedule background scripts natively using Windows Task Scheduler, with execution logs, log rotation, and instant failure alerts pushed to Telegram.
EngineeringDeploy a native instance of LinkStack or a lightweight URL shortener behind Caddy to manage link redirection under a custom subdomain.
EngineeringUtilize Cloudflare Email Routing for free inbound forwarding and set up Mailrise as an SMTP-to-app gateway to forward alerts as push notifications.
EngineeringInstall Miniflux or Wallabag natively on Windows to manage your RSS feeds and save articles for offline reading.
Engineering