About

Who Runs This Site? #

Hey — I’m Alex. I’ve been running self-hosted infrastructure since 2018, from Raspberry Pi clusters to cloud VPS setups. I’m not a DevOps engineer by trade; I’m just someone who got tired of SaaS subscriptions and decided to figure things out the hard way.

What I actually do:

• Run a homelab with Proxmox, Docker, and a growing collection of self-hosted apps
• Experiment with local LLMs (Ollama, llama.cpp, Open WebUI)
• Track personal finance and side-project income streams
• Write about what the r/selfhosted, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/personalfinance communities are actually discussing

What SmartStack Is #

SmartStack is my public notebook. Every article here starts as a real community discussion — usually a trending Reddit thread or Hacker News post — that I research, synthesize, and turn into a practical guide.

I don’t do generic roundups. If I write about a tool, I’ve probably installed it. If I compare approaches, I’ve tested at least two of them. If I’m not sure about something, I say so.

Why This Exists #

Because most tech content on Google in 2026 is SEO-optimized slop written by people who’ve never touched a terminal. I wanted something better — concise, opinionated, and grounded in real experience.

No ads. No affiliate links. No “top 10” listicles. Just practical guides from someone in the trenches.

Get In Touch #

Found a mistake? Have a better approach? Open an issue or PR on GitHub.

Or find me lurking in r/selfhosted.