I’ve always been a fan of homelabbing. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of approaches — and let’s just say a few hard drives didn’t survive the journey. RIP. Between drive failures and endless tinkering with Raspberry Pis, I always assumed self-hosting was just meant to be a painful experience.
Then life gave me a window of free time to actually play around with this stuff, and I decided to give it another proper shot. I started with CasaOS, which looked promising, but it never quite clicked for me. Something was always slightly off — whether it was the feature set, the workflow, or just the overall feel. It didn’t satisfy me enough to stick with it.
So I kept looking.
Finding UmbrelOS
Eventually I came across UmbrelOS — and it changed everything. Umbrel is a dashboard for all your self-hosted services, designed to be as close to a set-and-forget experience as possible. That said, you still get to roll up your sleeves a little — which is half the fun, right? It wouldn’t be as satisfying otherwise.
What makes it great
It has everything you actually need:
- 🛍️ App Store — browse and install services via Docker with a single click
- 📦 Hundreds of popular app images ready to go
- đź”’ 2FA and encrypted backup support
- 🗂️ Organized data folders
- ✨ A genuinely clean and well-thought-out UI
Under the hood, it runs on a Debian-based OS, which means tweaking low-level settings can be a bit tricky if you really want to go deep. But that same design is also what makes it a stable and consistent environment — perfect for non-technical people, or for anyone who just wants to run a few services without losing an entire weekend in the dark depths of their room.
My Setup
Running it headless (yes, I went there) on an old laptop with a bunch of external drives attached for storage. It hums away quietly in a corner doing its thing, and I love it.
If you’ve got an old PC, laptop, or Raspberry Pi collecting dust somewhere, give it a try. It’s a great way to start your self-hosting journey — and it’s actually a lot of fun.