About the Nerdhole

My name is Menno Willemse, and this is my network. I have a couple of PCs of various age, a printer, and one currently defunct IBM pServer 520p. Included are my daily workstations, one fairly beefy KVM host, and other assorted hardware. It pleases me to treat this as the network environment of a small company. I am mostly based on CentOS Stream Linux, but I will support other Unix-like operating syatems as well, at least for manual installations. The methodologyism I use for this, I have called Nerdhole Small Company or Home Office On Linux, or N-SCHOOL.

In addition, I write fiction, play a few musical instruments, and help with the stage technology for my local community theatre: Medway Little Theatre.

I built this network for a couple of reasons: First, therapy. I am a professional Linux geek, but I do not have the opportunity at work to do with the machines what I want. This, the Nerdhole, is my domain. It allows me to return to my original passion of getting technology to work. Second, to prove to the world that it is in fact possible to build quite a comfortable environment using only Free and Open Source Software such as Linux.

This site contains:

• General information about my network environment
• Braindumps - Things that seem like a good idea at the time
• Designs - Things that hopefully really are good ideas.
• Reports - Automated reports in Markdown format that mkdocs can convert
• Tales - Fictional stories, Fan- or otherwise.

From this site, you can learn how I have set up my home network. Do not expect to download a script from here that will set up your home network automatically. That is not the purpose of this site. This is the result of more than thirty years of Unix experience. Mostly bad. With a simple script, you will be lost when next you run into trouble. I aim to arm the multitude of my readers with the wisdom to set up their own environments.