Top all-time · #1849
Stefano Marinelli
Personal blog · it-notes.dragas.netsystemsprogramming
Stefano Marinelli writes IT Notes, a personal blog at it-notes.dragas.net about systems and programming. Since 2022, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 83 times, most often “Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 2025”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Stefano Marinelli's IT Notes covers FreeBSD and NetBSD home servers, self-hosted services, and networking setups such as VPNs, CDNs and Mastodon hosting. HN readers cite it as a FreeBSD resource.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Scattered IT Notes - by Stefano Marinelli
Most-linked posts?
- Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 20254 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-03-23
- Building a Self-Hosted CDN for BSD Cafe Media3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-26
- FediMeteo: A €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-01
- That Old NetBSD Server, Running Since 20102 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-27
- From Cloud Chaos to FreeBSD Efficiency2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-07-04
- Why I (Still) Love Linux ?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-24
- Make your own VPN – WireGuard, IPv6 and ad-blocking included2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-07-10
- Native encrypted ZFS on root (zfsbootmenu) with voidlinux2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-22
- BSSG – My journey from dynamic CMS to bash static site generator2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-07
- FreeBSD vs. SmartOS: Who's Faster for Jails, Zones, and Bhyve VMs?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-19
What Hacker News says?
> Are there any fun lab projects, posts, educational series targeted at FreeBSD? Klara Systems [0], Vermaden [1] and IT Notes [2] seems to be the most active and popular. - [0] https://klarasystems.com/articles/ - [1] https://vermaden.wordpress.com/posts/ - [2] https://it-notes.dragas.net/categories/freebsd/
Comment linking /categories/freebsd/
on “Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)”Submitted We're migrating many of our servers from Linux to FreeBSD as a story · 445 points
HN discussionalso in recent news: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2024/12/28/i-almost-died-for-a-f...
Comment linking /2024/12/28/i-almost-died-for-a-full-sentry-database/
on “I gave up on self-hosted Sentry (2024)”Submitted The email they shouldn't have read as a story · 412 points
HN discussionAs it is, the article is a bit confusing because it's the third one in the series just focusing on NetBSD. The original one[0] offers a better context, especially this bit: > The idea is to create reverse proxies with local caching. These proxies would cache the content on the first request and serve it directly afterward. The proxies would be distributed across different regions, and the DNS would route requests to…
Comment linking /2024/08/26/building-a-self-hosted-cdn-for-bsd-cafe-media/
on “Make Your Own CDN with NetBSD”Submitted A server that wasn't meant to exist as a story · 407 points
HN discussionThe first article in the series offers a better explanation of what and why: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2024/08/26/building-a-self-hoste...
Comment linking /2024/08/26/building-a-self-hosted-cdn-for-bsd-cafe-media/
on “Make Your Own CDN with NetBSD”Submitted Make Your Own Backup System – Part 1: Strategy Before Scripts as a story · 364 points
HN discussionI was going to say "the FediMeteo people probably have some good ideas there because it's what they do" except it's already right there in the acknowledgements (Stefano Marinelli => FediMeteo). A good read - https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-...
Comment linking /2025/02/26/fedimeteo-how-a-tiny-freebsd-vps-became-a-global-weather-service-for-thousands/
on “Migrating Burningboard.net Mastodon Instance to a Multi-Jail FreeBSD Setup”Submitted Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs as a story · 334 points
HN discussionOpenBSD version from five months ago by the same author: https://it-notes.dragas.net/2023/04/03/make-your-own-vpn-wir...
Comment linking /2023/04/03/make-your-own-vpn-wireguard-ipv6-and-ad-blocking-included/
on “Make Your Own VPN – WireGuard on FreeBSD on IPv6 with Ad Blocking Included”Submitted Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150 as a story · 193 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Your Own Backup System – Part 2: Forging the FreeBSD Backup Stronghold as a story · 122 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Your Own CDN with NetBSD as a story · 70 points
HN discussionSubmitted Install Alpine Linux on FreeBSD Jail as a story · 63 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why I (Still) Love Linux ? as a story · 48 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Your Own Read-Only Device with NetBSD as a story · 40 points
HN discussionSubmitted FediMeteo: A €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service as a story · 36 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Cloud Chaos to FreeBSD Efficiency as a story · 32 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Illumos Cafe: Another Cozy Corner for OS Diversity as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted BSSG – My journey from dynamic CMS to bash static site generator as a story · 20 points
HN discussionSubmitted That Old NetBSD Server, Running Since 2010 as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 2025 as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted I (Still) Love Linux as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Choose to Use the BSDs in 2025 as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Evolving the BSD Cafe Network Setup: From Bridging to Routing with FreeBSD as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make your own VPN – FreeBSD, WireGuard, IPv6 and ad-blocking included – IT Notes as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted From Proxmox to FreeBSD – Story of a Migration as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Make Your Own Internet Presence with NetBSD and a 1 Euro VPS Part 1 as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Bridging Networks Across VPS with WireGuard and Vxlan on FreeBSD as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
