I wanted some help with a homelab server I am in the beginning stages of designing. I am looking for a flexible and scalable media and cloud system for home use, and I thought this community would be a good place to source feedback and recommendations before taking any real next steps! I really want to check that I am approaching the architecture correctly and not making any bad assumptions. I am open to all feedback, so please let me know what you think!
I already run a simple home server and I have typical homelab FOSS apps, such as jellyfin, navidrome and audiobookshelf, but I am also interested in migrating away from cloud storage using nextcloud, immich, etc. In an ideal world, this setup would also allow me to leave windows on my main machine and use a windows vm for business related work that can’t be done on Linux. I will likely be the one primarily using the services, however I could expect up to 10 - 20 users eventually.

High level setup is with two machines:

• Proxmox Server
• TrueNAS Scale server
  • JBOD with either 90 bay or 45 bay storage
• 10G switch

This might be a stupid setup right off the bat, which is why I wanted to discuss it with you all! I have read a ton about using TrueNAS as a WM within Proxmox, but I just like the idea of different machines handling different tasks. The idea here would be to set up the TrueNAS server so it can be optimized for managing the storage pool to allow for easy growth. While the Proxmox server can handle all the VMs and connecting users, with higher IO, etc.

TrueNAS System Specs:

• AMD ryzen CPU and motherboard
• 64 or 128GB ram
• Mirror 500GB M.2 NVMe OS Drives
• GPU if necessary, but hopefully not needed
• Dual 10gb pcie card if the motherboard doesnt already come with them
• An hba for the JBOD something like the LSI SAS 9305-16e
• SLOG and L2ARC as necessary?

JBOD enclosure

• While I am interested in a 90-bay enclosure, I would only realistically be starting with two vdevs which is why I think a 45 bay enclosure wouldn’t be an issue.
• Im tentatively planning for an 11 wide Raidz2 vdev configuration. This would hopefully scale to 8 vdevs with 2 hot spares or 4 vdevs with 1 hot spare.
• All drives would be HDDs

Proxmox Server Specs:

I am less familiar with the specs I will need for a good Proxmox server, but here is what I am thinking.

• AMD epyc and motherboard if I can get my hands on a less expensive one. Otherwise I was thinking a higher end AMD ryzen cpu
• 128 or 256GB ram
• Mirror 500GB M.2 NVMe OS Drives
• Somewhere between 2 and 8 TBs of SSD storage. Depending on the number of drives, I think this would be a single drive, mirror or raidz1.
  • This storage will be used for all the vm configuration and storage, except for something like Nextcloud where the main storage will go onto the TrueNAS mount.
  • I would also use this for temporal storage such as downloading a file before transferring it to the TrueNAS mount.
• A dedicated GPU primarily for transcoding media streams, but also for testing and experimenting with different AI models.
• Dual 10gb pcie card

Questions:

• I know Proxmox can do zfs right out of the box so I know I don’t need the TrueNAS server, but splitting it this way just seems more flexible. Is this a realistic setup or would it just be better to let Proxmox do everything?
  • Does anyone have experience creating NFS shares in TrueNAS for mounting in Proxmox? I would be interested in thoughts on performance, and stability among any other insights.
• Do any of the system specs I listed seem out of line? Where and how do you think things should be scaled up or down?
• If I ever did expand to a second JBOD shelf, assuming the first one was full first, is it be possible to create new vdevs that spanned across the shelfs without losing data?
• Is SLOG and/or L2ARC necessary for this setup? What capacity and configuration would be best?
• What else have I missed?

Lastly, a quick blurb:

I have been building PCs for a while and undertook building a home server a few years ago. I loved the experience of learning Linux (the server is running Ubuntu), picking up docker, and learning more about the FOSS community has been a joy! Part of this project is to learn along the way but also have a setup that I can build towards over time! Proxmox, TrueNAS and zfs would all be new to me so I really see it as an opportunity to explore. I want a solid media and cloud server setup, while also giving myself the freedom to explore new operating systems and general hypervisor functionality.

Hello smart ~comp people! I have a very basic, layman question. The kind of question I'm scared to make on Reddit and gettting flamed. Tildes is usually more patient ;)

Suppose that I get get a bunch of "best of" lists for several videogames. Like "the best RPGs on the Nintendo DS" for example. The lists have varying lenghts. Is there an easy way for me to combine those lists into one that doesn't require (really) learning to program?

I can follow instructions! Thanks!

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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We had more people at our local/suburb protest than in June. I think organizers still underestimated attendance as we never even made it to the route of the march. The crowd was trying to funnel through some tight spaces so eventually people just stood on the side of the busy streets and collected horn honks. Atmosphere was great. Everything relaxed. Many choice signs.

While I ate breakfast, I watched a YouTube video speaking to how death becomes an inconvenience in D&D 5e as early as 5th level, despite the amount of weight that people generally put behind it in the moment. Here's a relevant transcript.

Well, the obvious answer to this is to ban the spells that take away the permanence of death; that way there's stakes staying all the way through 20th level. The problem with this answer is that D&D isn't balanced around those spells not existing at later levels.

I love Risk of Rain 2 but my biggest problem with that game is being 30 minutes into a run and getting one-shot, dying, and having to start all over. I couldn't imagine having that same feeling after playing FOUR YEARS in a campaign.

I don't necessarily disagree with the first paragraph, but the second one is wild to me for two reasons.

• First, Risk of Rain is a roguelike whose entire game loop is "do stuff, die, unlock/purchase meta progression, do more stuff, die, etc. etc.".
• Second, the idea that you've been playing four years in a 5e game that's presumably weekly and somehow haven't hit 20th level. For context, 5e wants you hitting 20th level after 36-52 typical 4-hour sessions.

This kind of sentiment really does highlight how distant the way I ran the game those eight years I spent with 5e and how the game wants to be run is to the way people appear to be running the game, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to square that circle. Not to imply any kind of superiority to it, it just continues to be extremely weird/interesting to me how the culture surrounding D&D is so different from the expectations laid out by the very rules text people don't read.

Here is my goodreads, I accept every friend request I get, add me! I like seeing reviews from people who hang out in similar places as I do pinned above general user reviews. Warning, if you don't have many friends on there I will flood your activity feed (but hopefully this thread changes that anyway)

Inspired by this post

I have decent internet at home.

I have great internet at work.

Despite the speeds of those though, seemingly every website out there feels laggy and heavy. You click, you wait, you get a skeleton of the page, with different elements that rapidly pop in until you're staring at the full site. You see the little loading animation on the tab for one, two, three seconds. It isn't exactly "slow" by any means, but it's far from instantaneous either.

Clicking around the web these days feels like I'm playing a game with unignorable input lag.

And I get it. The modern web is complex. It's genuinely a miracle that this is possible in the first place, so I really shouldn't be complaining that the bits traveling through the internet from dozens of servers thousands of miles away aren't getting here immediately.

I get that high resolution screens require large images, and the ubiquity of video these days adds even more weight. I get that many websites are closer to applications than they are static pages.

I'm not trying to take away from the awesome magic that is our modern miracle of connectivity in the slightest, and I'm appreciative to all the people here who spend their livelihoods working on it. Y'all are awesome.

I'm just trying to say that, well, sometimes moving around on the web can drag. And when you've been using it for a long time, the dragging can get under your skin a little bit.

However, my real point lies not in the rest of the internet, but here. I'm talking about this "heavy web" baseline as a contrast for one of the things I love about Tildes:

it. is. so. snappy.

I click, and BAM, the page is there. Immediately.

It's sharp. It's crisp. It's no-nonsense. No waiting for elements to pop in. No subconsciously watching for the loading animation to stop so that I know I can start to interact with site.

For general design reasons, I've always loved that Tildes is text-only, but more and more I appreciate that aspect simply because Tildes feels good to use because it is so quick and responsive. I don't know how much of that is due to the text-only part of things and how much of it is Deimos being a genius code wizard who made an amazing platform, but I'm happy about it regardless.

This site has got zero input lag.

And that feels great.

For reference, here is the ODbL. There is a nice human readable summary. You can also read more in the Wikipedia entry.

The most famous database available under the ODbL is OpenStreetMaps.

I recently found out about OpenCorporates, which is a global database of companies, published under the ODbL. I thought this was great, so I applied for access to use the database for a project. I was denied because I'm not a journalist or a nonprofit and instead was invited to pay for access instead. And it's not cheap, likely because company databases are often used in the B2B space.

I replied that this seemed to be in conflict with their mission, especially given that my project was focused on using the data to create a benefit to the public, and their response was that they wanted to protect against their database being copied.

From my reading, this seems to be in direct conflict with the ODbL. Egregiously so, which has me thinking I'm missing something.

Does anyone have any insight? It seems to me that the whole point of the ODbL license is to make data freely available. This is backed up by interpretations I came across while searching and by the ethos of other orgs using the license, such as OSM. What am I missing?

Edit: I'm still excited to hear from anyone with knowledge in this area, or just general insights into how I'm misunderstanding the license.

And also, having learned that The Open Data Commons, which publishes and maintains the ODbL, uses this definition of the concept of open... I'm leaning towards the interpretation that OpenCorporates wants the aura of using a reputable license with the word "open" in it, but isn't genuinely interested in the ethos. Which is disappointing but not shocking, they'd be far from the first.

United States Grand Prix
Circuit of the Americas
October 17-19, 2025

Next race:

Mexico City Grand Prix
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
October 24-26, 2025

For those who are unfamiliar, Subway Takes is a popular short form internet talk show "in which the interviewees present and defend a unique or controversial opinion, called a 'take'" Takes are usually halfbaked and/or tongue-in-cheek. Some popular examples include:

There are too many states in America

Everybody in New York has rich parents or is selling drugs

Spirit Airlines does not deserve the hate

Italians became white after 9/11

So what's your take?

I recently had a bad monitor failure after six or so years of normal use. Specifically, my LG 34GK950F-B had an electrical failure that, in a limited sense, caught a ribbon cable inside on fire. It is exactly the same failure as shown here, and I add a few images of documentation of my case here.

Anyhow, I am now in the market for a new ultrawide, and I need one as soon as yesterday since my desktop currently has no display - I have been tunneling into it to do anything. General recommendations would be nice - but a few things specifically:

• what is the burn in situation like on modern OLED monitors?
• I would prefer not to spend a massive amount, is that doable while still supporting the following use cases?
  • lots of coding, needs to render text nicely as the top job
  • photo editing, needs to have good color accuracy or be trivial to calibrate such that it does
  • occasional gaming, I don’t game on my desktop much these days, but I don’t want the monitor to feel clunky when I do

This post is a bit stream-of-conscience, so if any other questions or requirements come to mind I will edit it.

Edit: I guess as much as I don’t want to spend a ton, I will also end up using this display for at least another five years - I don’t mind spending a little more to account for that.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like cryptography.post quantum, chatfishing and curses.wizard. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was getting befuddled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!