this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Hello Lemmy! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Myself and a few friends love self-hosting, but believe that it's hard to get started. So we created what we believe to be the easiest gateway to homelabbing, and we called it Homelabinator!

To celebrate our launch, we are running a giveaway! Submit a screenshot of a subscription you have canceled to enter into a giveaway for a free domain of your choice!

Check it out here: homelabinator.com

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[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 10 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Great idea, really good name.

I looked at the back end source.

  1. Do I understand correctly that when I run your app in my PC, the ISO is built on your server and then I download it?

  2. Why does app.py submit an ip address to a google form?

https://github.com/homelabinator/homelabinator-backend/blob/main/api/app.py

You should know, stuff like that is going keep a lot of self hosters from recommending this.

[–] iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
  1. That is correct! We looked at different options on how to build the ISO (mkisofs is really cool but doesn't play nice with the NixOS installer image), and ultimately went with building it on a Nix server.
  2. Apologies for that, that was a leftover from when we were trying to gauge how many people were downloading ISOs when we showcased it to a club on campus yesterday. That has now been removed.
[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 1 points 3 minutes ago

Awesome, thanks for the answers

[–] Eirikr70@jlai.lu 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm not fond of what makes it easier to set up a homelab. Because it might give the impression that you can run it with very little skills. And that opens the door to making your setup a netbot.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 18 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

For people asking "ok but what is it":

Built on the shoulders of the giants that are NixOS and K3s, Homelabinator is an opinionated customization of NixOS

Also you should test your site on mobile. It's half broken for me.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Oof, yeah, it is not mobile friendly.

[–] iambeingheldhostage@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for the heads up on mobile! We agree, certainly everything needs more work, but full disclosure, we are all full time students and working on this project on the side. :)

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Looks vibe coded AF, is it ?

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world -3 points 3 hours ago

....aaaaaand away we go! qwerty!

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

OP, I took a cursory run through of the site. Looks good. Could really have potential for those just dipping their toes in the self hosting pool. I haven't tested the ISO created tho. One thing, Tailscale client id & secret. I'm not sure I would want to disclose that on an unknown website, because of privacy issues. I understand why you included it, but it seems like an brief explanation as to how to do that manually, once the ISO is deployed, for those who might have some of the same reservations. Perhaps I overlooked that if it exists. Otherwise it looks like it would be a great introductory to self hosting.

Onward and upward.

ETA: I like the name too.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 0 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Long time lurker

Joined: a week ago

[–] Micromot@piefed.social 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

You can lurk without an account tho, doesn't mean they are credible or not

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 1 points 1 hour ago

No account is needed to read Lemmy. I lurked a long time before creating an account myself.

[–] django@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 3 hours ago

How is it easier than yunohost?