Author: Christian Rakoot

Christian Rakoot, founder and author of Self Host Lab

Christian Rakoot is an industrial engineering and maintenance engineer who has been interested in computers since his first PC. It ran MS-DOS 3.22 on an Intel 286 with 4 MB of RAM, as best he remembers. Linux followed not long after, first Debian, then Mandrake.

He started programming in assembly, moved to Pascal and then Delphi, and later worked in C and the languages that came out of it. Small hardware kept his attention too, the Raspberry Pi in particular.

When fibre optic reached Madagascar more than fifteen years ago, hosting real services from home became worth doing. He has run mini PCs on Debian around the clock ever since, alongside Kimsufi servers for file storage and the applications that have no business sitting on a home connection. He prefers open source. None of his servers run Windows.

Jellyfin on Apple TV: Swiftfin vs Infuse vs Reefy

Jellyfin still doesn’t have an official Apple TV app. Here’s how Swiftfin, Infuse, and the new Reefy client actually compare…

July 14, 20269 min read
Best Self-Hosted AI Tools for Your Homelab in 2026

Ollama, Open WebUI, n8n, Immich, and Home Assistant: the open-source AI stack you can self-host today, with no subscriptions and…

July 14, 202611 min read
Self-Hosted Password Manager: Vaultwarden vs Bitwarden in 2026

An honest comparison of Vaultwarden, Bitwarden’s own self-hosted release, and KeePassXC: what actually differs, how to deploy Vaultwarden in Docker,…

July 14, 202611 min read
Self-Hosted LLM in 2026: The Complete Ollama + Open WebUI Setup Guide

A step-by-step walkthrough for installing Ollama and Open WebUI on your own hardware: hardware sizing, Docker setup, securing the stack,…

July 14, 202611 min read
Homelab Setup Guide for Beginners (2026)

A practical, no-nonsense walkthrough for building your first homelab: what hardware actually makes sense, what it costs, which software layer…

July 14, 202612 min read
Plex Server Setup

A complete, no-nonsense walkthrough for installing Plex Media Server on Windows, Docker, or a NAS, the hardware it actually needs,…

July 14, 202610 min read
Jellyfin vs Emby

Jellyfin is 100% free forever, including hardware transcoding. Emby is free to install but locks transcoding, DVR, and offline sync…

July 14, 202610 min read
Jellyfin Remote Access: How to Stream Your Library Safely From Anywhere

Jellyfin doesn’t do one-click remote access like Plex. Here’s exactly how to reach your library from anywhere with Tailscale or…

July 14, 202611 min read
Jellyfin vs Plex: which one should you run in 2026?

Plex just made remote streaming a paid feature and nearly tripled its lifetime price. Here’s an honest, current look at…

July 13, 202610 min read