This is just my story and how I have done/am considering looking at doing it. I to have a OpenWRT firewall, I to have lived in the Apple ecosystem my whole life, but I am slowly climbing out of it.

I have a Samsung laser printer of some sort, before I got into the whole home labbing and privacy thing I just had a raspberry pi of some sort (it rotated a few times because I was attempting the adblocking with pihole off and on). When I decided privacy was the better option and I had my pihole figured out I installed CUPS on a pi zero 2, I so rarely used the thing that it was not a thought for me to look up and install SANE I just used the app and the wifi from the printer. A day came a long when I had to do the wifi suffle to do the scanning when I thought there must be a better way and installed SANE. Fun side note; I have a perimant disability and see a physio, the insurance I have wants some paper work (that so rarely changes) every three months so I just have a script that looks at my calendar so the day of my physio treatments and counts the number of times I have seen them and prints out the documents if it is time to send them! So number 2 is my suggestion for sure if you are just beginning.

I have a vLAN (10.0.69.0/24) that my homelab sits on so my printer is attached to it that way with the pi I am using for CUPS and SANE, my HAOS pi is also on that vLAN and I see HA has something it can do with the printer I have considered looking at that once or twice. Now that you have mentioned this I may just read up on it because I have issues with SANE, not sure if it is configured correctly or my printer just really does not like it but if HA can do the things I may set it up and attach it to my IoT wifi vLAN (10.66.6.0/24) which does not access the outside world but HA and my 2 personal vLANs (10.42.0.0/24 for wifi and 10.4.20.0/24 for my VPN) can do things in it. I got into numbering my vLANs with fun combos when one day I was out and about when I could not connect to my VPN because it used the same IP range or something like that.

I use static IPs for everything within their own vLAN but I do not think it would be worth my time to set up firewall rules just for it when I have other options. If it does not need to phone home for anything other than data harvasting it is either not attached to the internet like my “smartTV” or it goes onto my IoT wifi that HA can do the stuff with.

I had to look up if there was a JMAP, turns out there is did not know that. It is primarly Fastmail and a few neiche apps that use it. IMAP is the way to go though.

It is an “open standard” developed by microslop as I understand it.

Baikal does the calendar and contacts great.

It will be difficult giving up touch but things need to change.

I have always gone back to the same distribution when my SD card died, or I upgraded my pi setup. So I never have thought about changing distros, however when I found a 2014 Mac mini just hanging out on my desk without a second thought, I downloaded all my itunes purchased music and installed Debian. I thought hey why not, raspberry pi OS is a fork of Debian and I was cool with that. I installed it using the GUI but quickly realized running the GUI on it was pointless so uninstalled it.

Why did I install Debian over Ubuntu? I don’t know maybe because it was one of if not the longest maintained version of Linux. It is still maintained even though Ian passed away so I feel confident that it will stay maintained well into the future, I do not know if Deb has/had anything to do with it.

If you want to try something else to reach higher enlightenment may I suggest TempleOS, it may have internet access now but I do not know how the CLI is? If you want to screw with family members may I suggest Hana Montana or Bieber OS.

Next week I will hopefully be getting a hand me down Mac mini because Apple is no longer supporting it I plan on installing Debian and using it as my Jellyfin set top box with Librewolf adguard and sponsor block for youtube.

I admittly have not been able to shake the Apple out of my LAN fully yet. And I was having difficulties with my iphone, ipad, and linux devices syncing with Nextcloud. That was when it was hosted elsewhere. So I I stopped trying that as I was still whenning myself off of icloud, I later tried selfhosting Nextcloud and same problem plus it was not syncing contacts. I was almost ready to throw in the towel and call Nextcloud useless and started just using smb and fiddled with syncthing I recently went onto my Nextcloud webui to find my halloween counter and decided I may still use it as a file server, syncthing may still be running somewhere on my LAN no idea! lol

I needed something to sync my calendars so I went searching, I remember checking out a few things (some of which may still be running on my homelab but Baikal is what I use) and Baikal won out just because it was dumb simple and only did calendars and contacts it did not try to do more, the moment it tries to do more I will be looking for a new service.

It could also be that I use caddy with https and my devices did not like using nextcloud with https for calendars and contacts, but Baikal works fine with the https. I get the ssl certificate from my web host, easydns hosts my VNC and email.

Fun side note: I originally was going to host my blog out of my place but decided to use a VPS instead, I had already moved my domain name and email to easydns so I got a VPS instead.

I have an old MacBook, it needs a new battery and SSD, but that could work as a ipad replacement with Linux thanks for the idea.

Yes but install

GrapheneOS

This removes the Google from the phone, Motorola’s flagship phone is coming out with GrapheneOS in 2027. Expect more to follow.

I would push back on using Nextcloud for contacts and calendars, as I think that is Nextcloud trying to do to much and failing. I use Baïkal as that is its only focus.

I am currently in the process of doing this to; I have been using raspberry pi’s off and on for years for pihole, I think pihole is always going to be part of my network now that I have fallen down the rabit hole of home labbing. I had practically already given up on MacOS for iOS and was more than happy to SSH, VNC, or use apps WebUI with the raspberry pi’s. I was more than fine with the AppleTV, whatever the subscription service was called, iCloud, and whatever else I was paying for. The services where the first to go, I had pi 5’s with PoE++ NVMe hats with drives in a few of them so I started using Jellyfin for some of my things; than later on I started using the *arr apps to get and follow TV shows and Movies, if buying is not owning pirating is not stealing. I had already had a personal domain but they did not have a wildcard email service so I did the calculations and it was going to be less expensive to get the business plan for unlimited email address (I already had well over 100 apple hide my email addresses) for four years than it was going to be for Apple’s hide my service so I had done that, as I had a formula for creating random email addresses (Service name).(Saskatchewan slang)(3 random numbers)@my domain.ca I was peachy with that but it got frustrating needing to go to the webpage create a new address than sign up (or renew my trial period) for a service. I eventually dropped them and moved to easydns who offered wildcard email addresses, so I could create email addresses on the fly. And they where considerable less expensive.

As I had said I started using the *arr apps after I started using Jellyfin was because my place flooded and my TV was put into storage, I had just been using the channel apps on the AppleTV for them to bring up the shows I was watching but the TV app on my iPad was not nearly as good so off to the high seas I went and found the *arr apps, I had tried coding a script to watch for TV shows but that failed horribly.

The boycott the US movement had also started here in Canada, so me being a good little Canadian girl wanted to limit the amount of US services I was using, so that meant moving away from Apple. I had orignally paid for a hosted version of Nextcloud on a Canadian server, but I quickly fell out of love with Nextcloud, I felt that it tried to do to much and failed at most of it. I thought I would self host it and work out the things that did not work, I ended up forgetting about it and just self hosting seperate services for things like my calendars, contacts, notes, and whatever else. I may go back to it for files though, right now they are just in a smb share.

I had an extra pi 5 just hanging out hosting my blog so I thought I could put it on something else so I got a VPS from easyDNS, more or less to get it off my LAN I thought it was the pi 5 hosting Jellyfin that was making my jellyfin things choppy and the such so I thought hey I have a 2014 mac mini just collecting dust I could install Debian on it and Jellyfin would just magically work on the pi 5 attached to my TV, this could not be further from the truth. My father is going to be replacing his 2018 Mac Mini soon so I am going to be getting it handed down to me so that I can install Debian on it and attach it to my TV, it sadly does not have CSC but I think I will get HA to fix that.

Thinking about HA, I have HAOS running on a pi 4 to replace apple Home and a few other services. I sadly still have two home pod minis but they work with home assistant, I have 2 pi zero 2s that I want to get microphone and speakers for to work with the nabu system.

I use Vaultwarden to replace Apple passwords, I get all the paid for benefits of Bitwarden but it is running on a pi 5, being backed up to my VPS. I use immich for all my photos, again backed up to my VPS.

Because I was bored out of my mind with half my place going through the process of insurance I got a Flint 2 that I could install vanilla openWRT on and get static IP addresses from my ISP my orignal plan was to self host a email server hence 2 IP addresses, but I like my hair and I really did not want to pull it all out! I have a domain so I installed the Caddy docker image on one of my pi 5’s and I can access all my things away from the LAN.

I sadly still have not replaced the homepods, the iphone, the ipad, or the watch. I entend on replacing the homepods soon, the iPhone next year because updates are done, the ipad in a few years when I have the money for a Laptop (as much as I hate it being a US company I will probably replace it with a frame work), and the watch needs replacing but I like apple’s wallet I will need to find an alternative for it once I replace my phone.

Side note I have an old iPad in my kitchen running HA kiosk so I can see a few things.

POP needs to die a painful death, in the year 2026 when you have multiple devices POP is not the answer, IMAP is the way. Sure you can self host your own email, but you will either need a static IP at home or a VPS with a static IP, than you need to make sure either one is cool with you hosting your email through there. You will need more than a week to figure things out and by the end of the week you will have pulled out all of your hair, I stopped trying going into a few days!

My suggestion however is to get someone else to host your email, the company that hosts my domain name and my VPS also hosts my email. I think I got 4 addresses with them but they have a wildcard option so that I can have infinite email address; so I can block things if they get spammy, I no longer want to see them, I no longer use their services, or I want a longer free trial which I may have done 2 or 3 times.

I used IMAP with my ISP, I had a technical question about something and the tech worker bee was surprised that they still offered IMAP as everything for the worker bees end had been moved to exchange. I read up on it after the chit chat and it appeared they where looking at transitioning everyone over to exchange in the coming years, so I created an away message to my ISP mail, forwarding stuff from there to one aand address at my domains IMAP server full time slowly adding things to the do not forward list.

I am guessing so

I love this remark!

I have a Flint 2 with a vanilla install of OpenWRT with 4 or 5 different AP, than 8 or 9 different vLANs.

Sure can, but because it is not attached to the internet video is not offered. I am sure I could find a way to do it but I do not care enough to do that.

I have that blocked, things in my IoT subnet do not have access to the internet.

You can see my blog blog.reannlegge.ca sure but I am not going to show off all of my services in a library

I am fairly confident I am not going to grant anyone access to homelab I do not know.