Tools & frameworks

I love Debian for its stability and its community: the project has been around for a very long time and is extremely reliable. I use it everywhere: Debian stable on my server, and Debian unstable (sid) on my desktop and laptop.

Used in

• Homelab
• Desktop
• Laptop

My window manager, with my own configuration and other customisations such as Waybar.

Used in

• Desktop
• Laptop

My password manager. Email aliases keep my digital identity separated, every account gets a strong password and 2FA, and sharing passwords is easy.

I use Podman instead of Docker because it's lighter and more secure. Permissions on mounted volumes, for example, are better separated: an application in Podman runs with its own permissions and can't just access other files, which is often the case with Docker.

Used in

• This website
• Haskey Hasselt

Takes a lot of configuration off my hands. I used to run nginx as a reverse proxy, but it needed a lot of boilerplate and HTTPS had to be managed separately with Certbot. Caddy does it all in one package.

Used in

• Homelab
• Haskey Hasselt

A great tool to describe declaratively which steps are needed to provision a server.

Used in

• Homelab

In my opinion the best VPN software: easy to configure once you know how it works, and it works great together with further firewall configuration.

Used in

• Homelab

Protects my whole network from trackers and ads. I also use its local DNS for my own DNS records, both at home and over my VPN.

Used in

• Homelab

Adds compression and deduplication to backups, so they are stored efficiently. Restoring specific files or folders is easy, and it combines nicely with a cron job.

Used in

• Homelab

Old-school, but robust and reliable for CI/CD. I've used GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD too, but Jenkins has a special place in my heart: it's fully open source, has a great community with lots of plugins, and all the data stays on my own server instead of on another platform where you often have to pay extra.

Used in

• This website
• Haskey Hasselt
• Kokenmetlisa
• Alfred

Everyone in IT uses it; you can hardly do without it. A great project, started by Linus Torvalds, for version control and collaboration through branches. It also integrates great with CI/CD workflows.

Used in

• All projects

Why OpenTofu instead of Terraform? OpenTofu is open source and part of the Linux Foundation. It is a fork of an older Terraform version, created after Terraform changed its license, and offers the same core functionality you need.

Used in

• Black Talon

AWS

I know how to use it well, including with infrastructure as code.

Azure

I know how to use it well, including with infrastructure as code.

I love Hetzner because it's European and has improved a lot over the years. The prices are great too, even though they've gone up a bit. It runs my mail server: mail servers need special ports that you usually can't open on a home network. During my internship I also used Hetzner to deploy demo applications.

Used in

• Mail server
• Black Talon

One of the largest CDN and DNS providers. Very reliable, and they do everything they can to make the internet faster and safer.

Used in

• Black Talon

In my opinion the best framework for frontend development. Its server-side features let me run logic behind the scenes too, and components and TypeScript make everything more fun and easier.

Used in

• This website
• Haskey Hasselt
• Kokenmetlisa

Not my favourite, but I know it well.

Used in

• Haskey Hasselt (formerly)

My favourite AI agent.

My first choice for programming.

VS Code

For scripting, and for programming too.

For configuration files and quick edits.

I use them daily: Debian is the primary operating system on all my devices.