Top all-time · #2380
./techtipsy
Personal blog · ounapuu.ee · on HN as hddhermanhardwareprogrammingsystems
./techtipsy is a personal blog at ounapuu.ee about hardware, programming and systems. Since 2021, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 114 times, most often “PSA: Part of your Kagi subscription fee goes to a Russian company (Yandex)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-23, and you can follow it by feed.
I'm Herman Õunapuu. I write about all sorts of topics, including self-hosting, software development, playing around with hardware, Linux stuff and more!
Most-linked posts?
- PSA: Part of your Kagi subscription fee goes to a Russian company (Yandex)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-07-17
- The IKEA-powered homelab on a wall3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-07
- I'm Done with Ubuntu2 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2025-02-05
- PCs use way too much power (2021)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-03
- Why Nextcloud feels slow to use2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-11-03
- I went back to using a ThinkPad from 20122 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-10
- Testing a Cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD Adapter on My ThinkPad T4302 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-04
- Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-05
- Strangling your service with a Kubernetes misconfiguration2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-04-18
- Shrinkflation, SanDisk Style2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-15
What Hacker News says?
https://ounapuu.ee/ I've finally managed to stick with a disciplined blogging schedule and have managed to write a modest amount of them over the past 2 years. It's also a one stop shop to references to the things I've archived. Not the most lightweight page in the world, but it's good enough at the moment.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Why Nextcloud feels slow to use as a story · 457 points
HN discussionYou may feel so right now, but wait until it's time to do a dist-upgrade... https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state”Submitted I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012 as a story · 379 points
HN discussionThing is, regular Linux distros are most prone to breakage when it comes to updates - especially Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros[1]. My elderly mum is non-technical and has been a Linux user for the past decade, and she had Xubuntu, Mint and Zorin - all of which ran fine until update broke it (and this is just a bog standard DELL Optiplex desktop with an Intel iGPU). So I switched her to Aurora a couple of years ago…
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “Retiring Windows 10 and Microsoft's move towards a surveillance state”Submitted Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana as a story · 354 points
HN discussion100% this. Also, to anyone who recommends Ubuntu (or derivatives), I point them to this page: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming”Submitted Surviving the front page of Hacker News on a 50 Mbps uplink as a story · 261 points
HN discussionMy mum was using it as a daily-driver for all your average user PC stuff. It was decent, easily to use and more user-friendly than Mint, IMO – until an update borked it completely, after two years of running. Unfortunately post-update-breakages is something that's typical of Ubuntu and most Ubuntu-based distros, so it's not really surprising [1]. I've since switched her to an immutable distro (Aurora [2]) and it's b…
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “Convert Linux to Windows”Submitted FOSDEM 2024: my experience, some notes and tech tips as a story · 251 points
HN discussionIf anyone is wondering, then there are Ventoy alternatives like IODD [0], but they are not perfect. Usable, but annoying in some aspects. [0]: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/14/iodd-st400-review/
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/14/iodd-st400-review/
on “Ventoy: Create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI Files”Submitted They make USB-C cables with displays now as a story · 222 points
HN discussionThere was a recent "why nextcloud feels slow' submission. Submission itself seemed off-course, to not really have analyzed the problem well (picked a pretty conventional a-priori whipping boy of bundle sizes). To me the clear winner in the comments was pointing out that there are massive waterfalls of fetching data to the client. https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/11/03/nextcloud-slow/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…
Comment linking /posts/2025/11/03/nextcloud-slow/
on “Opencloud – An alternative to Nextcloud written in Go”Submitted Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev as a story · 218 points
HN discussionFrom a link in TFA: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2024/05/02/smartplugs/
Comment linking /posts/2024/05/02/smartplugs/
on “Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a new one”Submitted Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a new one as a story · 217 points
HN discussionJust be aware that a small percentage of your money would be going to the Russian government: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/
Comment linking /posts/2025/07/17/kagi/
on “Kagi Bloopers – Search Results Gone Wrong”Submitted Testing a Cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD Adapter on My ThinkPad T430 as a story · 193 points
HN discussionOne thing to note is that you have to set up codecs/video acceleration stuff manually on Fedora because of legal reasons. Here's a pretty good guide for that, it also has some suggested configuration tweaks for GNOME that make it a bit nicer to use. https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2024/10/14/fedora-starter-pack/
Comment linking /posts/2024/10/14/fedora-starter-pack/
on “Fedora 42 Beta”Submitted I'm Done with Ubuntu as a story · 174 points
HN discussionGoing to assume this is about their partnership with Yandex for image searching. Quick Google results: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/07/17/kagi/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
Comment linking /posts/2025/07/17/kagi/
on “Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome”Submitted I finally found a use case for my Raspberry Pi Model B+ as a story · 140 points
HN discussionCanonical keeps doing stupid, anti-user, anti-community stuff constantly, to the point that many people consider them to be the Microsoft of the Linux world. For instance, not long ago, they were including ads/Amazon results in the Apps menu[1], similar to what Microsoft did with the Start menu. They also keep sneaking in suggestions (aka ads) for their Ubuntu Pro subscription in various places like the MOTD, or whe…
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?”Submitted Recovering a password-protected ThinkPad T60 as a story · 129 points
HN discussion> often the first few months are fine until you hit a wall or need to upgrade it. This is a common theme with Ubuntu and every Ubuntu-based distro - they all eventually break when doing updates. Eg: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
Comment linking /posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/
on “ElementaryOS – Thoughtful, capable and ethical replacement for Windows/macOS”Submitted Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server? as a story · 125 points
HN discussion> Why do you not trust Ventoy? > Ventoy is a great tool from what I’ve seen online and the use case it fills does save time and resources. However, I have some reservations about it. If I had to compromise a bunch of critical systems over a long time period, then publishing a great tool and having it tamper with your OS installation media silently would be a really good pick. At this time, I don’t trust the develope…
Comment linking /posts/2023/02/15/shrinkflation/
on “My New Computer”Submitted Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SATA SSD-s: how are they doing after 4 years of use? as a story · 85 points
HN discussionA read-only, self-hostable copy of StackOverflow (and its sister sites) is already doable with Kiwix + the content packages they publish. Content packages: https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages Example of how a site looks like (in this case SuperUser), hosted on my server: https://kiwix.ounapuu.ee/superuser.com_en_all_2021-04/A/inde... And hosting it really isn't all that difficult: https://ounapuu.ee…
Comment linking /posts/2021/12/09/self-hosting-wikipedia/
on “StackOverflow Is Down”Submitted The minimum viable fan control script as a story · 51 points
HN discussion
