[udev4096]

A perfect example of creating problems out of nowhere. Does OP have nothing productive to say other than dunking on the term? Since when does "homelab" resemble to anything concrete?

Edit: Looking at your "de-googling" post, which resembles a lot of privacy theatre, this just seems like nothing more than an attention grab

[nradk]

Well, I have nothing productive to say; overthinking nomenclature is probably even counterproductive. But I was actually quite curious to know if there are people like me who self host but don't use their setups primarily for experimentation or learning, and how they refer to their setup.. :)

[esperent]

Labs can be places for getting serious, routine work done, as any working pharmacologist or chemist would tell you. The term doesn't imply experimentation outside of vernacular usage.

[jauntywundrkind]

I want to say thanks for the post. I hadn't considered this before, but now it makes me really wish we had a different term in common use.

I definitely tend to think of networking labs, of things meant for short term use & experimentation, but many of us really enjoy & rely on these systems serving our homes, our lives, reliably, consistently. I've heard some defenses of labs, but rarely is a lab doing the same reliable work again and again and again at a lab; labs feel like forerunners, not established bedrock.

Some day I really hope home servers cross the chasm, become more and more accepted & common. I know there's so many countervailing reasons, conveniences that keep this unlikely, but still I hope some folks find reason & find it not hard to back off from big cloud, to find advantage in running things ourselves.

There's the well known home-ops repo & folks. https://github.com/onedr0p/home-ops among techies I've seen some lightbulbs go off by calling the system a home-cloud. I'm curious what other nomenclature people have seen used, and how they feel it's been received?

[BLKNSLVR]

I self-host a few things that are important to me but likely unimportant to anyone other than me. I use the term 'homelab' because that's the use that seems to be the norm in describing various computers in a network running shit at home that, if it were in production, would be on more modern, serious and redundant hardware.

I don't experiment much these days, so 'lab' isn't quite right. But if I were to experiment then it would be using the same hardware as all the other stuff. So it's both accurate and inaccurate.

In this instance: who cares, it gets the message across to the necessary demographic - and isn't that what communication is about?

...and I'm someone who could care less about words and grammar (notice the correct use of the term, so as not to say the literal opposite of what I'm trying to say (notice the correct use of the word literal, rather than it's not-oft-used-but-oft-correctly-applicable figurative)).

I don't know the (in)correctness of the use of brackets within brackets.

[n3storm]

Indeed we do. I call it the same but in a local network I bought domain. Lake backups.mylocaldomain or webs.mylocaldomain or storage.mylovaldomain or kavita.mylocaldomain

[brailsafe]

I've had people get visibly upset when either questioning the intent of a word they've used or when attempting to use a more specific descriptor for something they've asked me about, specifically when it's failed to accurately capture a given concept or could otherwise be ambiguous. Seems to me that it's at the heart of language and communication to think about these things, and while some may be more trite than others, I say go ahead, split those hairs and write about it. I also don't have a home lab, I have computers at home, and some random bits of gear. I don't know at what point I'd consider it a lab, maybe if it was more of a collection that was deliberately experimental, but it's not, it's just computers that have general purposes.

[znpy]

> A perfect example of creating problems out of nowhere.

Agreed.

It's still a homelab, the author just doesn't seem to like the term.

[Calwestjobs]

in europe you can not have haphazardly build electricity system without calling it "lab". (you need electrician to do your electricity work, but calling it "lab" you can do it yourself )

so in that sense i agree that homelab is just another hijacked term to allow people do nonproductive nonsense just to feel great.

look you have people here and on youtube selling (in more ways then one) nonsensical farces like "RPI cluster" etc. so i would argue that nonresistance to these farces actually proves OP is right. albeit i do not really see strong nor attacking rhetoric from OP in his post either, so i think problem is just that you have to chill out ;)

"degoogling" cost canada their sovereignty. just to refer to events of the past days... so even american president has to say something about it, so i think there is something to it, dont you think ?

[asalahli]

As a Canadian who doesn't follow daily news, I'm very curious to know what you're referring to in your last paragraph. Care to elaborate?

[Calwestjobs]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/world/canada/trump-digita...

sorry paywall .

[mvdtnz]

Use your words.

[Calwestjobs]

he says he is not watching news, so he does not care,

or he has schizophrenia and he cares but not cares,

or he is passive aggressive.

so which one you need me to address?

[Calwestjobs]

if you have need to downvote . please tell me what exactly im not understanding to make me a better person.

[esperent]

> in europe

Laws don't work like this in the EU, let alone in all of Europe.

[Calwestjobs]

of course you can not have your whole house be build like that, but calling one room as lab is allowed in most continental europe countries.

noone cares in Russia etc, you just have to make small donation to your public official (if they even care/notice) and everything is fine,

even those pizzaboxes...

EDIT: in most countries there are devices which can not be connected to grid without electrician in any case, like PV. but again germany has balkon PV something something. so yes, exceptions are to everything.

[juahan]

Well in Finland there is nothing like this for sure. You cannot do 230V electricity work regardless of what you call the rooms. I would really like to hear more about this in other European countries.

[esperent]

I've never heard of anything like this in Ireland or the UK. Every house is wired for 230v so you can connect pretty much anything you like up to whatever power the socket can handle. Normally 13-16A, but you can install an appliance circuit up to 45A.

[FinnKuhn]

Definitely not a thing in Germany either. Technically you even need an electrician to install a lamp in your ceiling.

[Calwestjobs]

100% there are temporary wiring / temporary installation exemptions in civilized parts of europe.

[juahan]

A Quick peek into the Finnish law tells me that the temporary wiring requirements are even more strict. There is no way to do any of that legally without license and proper training.

So I guess we are not civilized enough then.

[esperent]

> in civilized parts of europe

Ah, lovely. Racism.

Please speak clearly, which parts of Europe do you consider to be civilized, and which parts uncivilized?

[JohnBooty]

    "degoogling" cost canada their sovereignty. just to refer to events of the past days

What?

[Calwestjobs]

also your usage of 12 bit numbers horrifies me.

[brookst]

“My 1967 Camaro that’s on blocks with a couple of body panels off is not a ‘project car’”

[zxexz]

No, at this point it’s more is a permanent art installation :D

For real though, I have several cars on blocks at the moment. I can’t think of a single way to rationalize not calling them projects, even though when they were put up it was just going to be a “quick fix”. At least I finally got one in a state where I felt comfortable donating it.

[brookst]

Yeah, as soon as you’re arguing the semantics of a common phrase it’s a sign of denial or attempted spousal appeasement.