Brian McGonagill

What Is It?RustDesk is an open source, remote desktop system that gives you control of your own server, and client software. If you've ever used TeamViewer, AnyDesk, Remotely, GoToAssist, GoToMyPc, and a whole host of other options, then you'll understand exactly what RustDesk is.  It's remote access / remote support

I showed you how to setup and use a really nice homepage / dashboard for all of your self hosted services a while back called Dashy.  I've stuck with it since then, and have just been super happy with it.  It has active development, and tons of new features since then.

As I've been re-working my home network, moving from an Eero Mesh install to an open source setup using OPNSense as my firewall and router, and DD-WRT for my Wired / Wireless Access Points, one thing I didn't want ot mess up was my IP addressing that I had setup in

One of the things i really like about Eero was a notification about a new device joining my network.  I think it was really more based on a new lease being pulled from DHCP, but still it let me know when Family members or friends came by and got close

If you're already into self-hosting, and home-labbing (yes, I just made that word up I think), then you have probably used docker at some point.  If you have, and you haven't heard of the great tools out there for Graphical User interface based management of your docker applications, then you

I am combining the post for these two videos, as they are actually closely related.  If you've never heard of or used DD-WRT, then you'll be interested to know that it's been around for at least 15 years, if not more.  It's some amazing open source software (firmware) that takes

I've been wanting to switch away from my Eero mesh wireless network for almost a year and a half.  I really wanted a system that I had more control over, and an open source option was my ideal situation.  I have made several attempts to do this over the past

Diagramming is a powerful tool in the world in general. It can help you convey ideas from the very simple to the extremely complex with far less effort than to try and transmit the context of ideas and workflows with words alone. There are literally tons of diagramming tools out

What Is It?RPort is an RMM (Remote Machine Management) tool. It's a server based system where you install a client access application on each client machine you want to manage. That client then connects to the server, and becomes accessible in many ways. What Can I Do With It?

Why?Working remote has been a huge change for a lot of us.  Making these videos for the last two and a half years has been a huge learning experience for me, especially when it comes to our mics and background noise. When we all started working remote, meeting with

Vaultwarden is a compatible, open source, back end for Bitwarden written in Rust.  It is extremely light on resource requirements, and will work with any of the Bitwarden clients in your browsers and mobile devices. Why Run My Own Password ManagerThere are several reasons why you might want to run

I'm always trying to encourage my nieces and nephews to get into programming.  I think Apple really hit the nail on the head with their Swift Playground app that teaches kids how the basics of development works, and gives them some really great logic pussles. There are also things like

If you've ever wanted to just throw some screen ideas onto a canvas before, almost like a quick napkin drawing, or if you've wanted to create a fully clickable interface that you could have potential users give you feedback from, then you should definitely look at Quant-UX. As a Product

WikiJS is a tremendously powerful, extremely full-featured open source, self hostable Wiki system.  It has a modern user interface, and tons of settings, configuration, and customization options. Installing it with Docker-CE and Docker-Compose makes it a breeze to get WikiJS up and running in no time. Today, we'll go through

A really terrific RDP client that makes your remote machine desktops and environments available through your web browser.  The docker image we'll be using was built off of the original Oznu image work, but has been updated to provide some of the more recent features. JWetzell's image allows for the

I did a video last year on Zammad, an open source, powerful helpdesk support system that you can self host.  Recently, while looking into Zammad for some personal use, I started wondering what other options might be out there for Open Source offerings, and came across UVDesk.   I have to

I've covered multiple video surveillance options over the past year or so: Shinobi, Zoneminder, MotionEyeOS, Frigate, and they all have their pros and cons.  I was talking about some issues Zoneminder was generating on a network with Scott over at Scottibyte.  He suggested I look at iSpy. Now, having been

I was recently searching for a simple GUI tool to allow me to multi-select items on a remote system, and quickly copy / move them to my local system, and vice-versa.  A quick search sent me right to Muon (formerly known as Snowflake). It's a simple application, with a small footprint.

It's been a while since I covered Jellyfin, and I felt like it was time for an update. The install method, has not changed honestly, but I've learned a bit more about docker since my first video, so I thought I'd give you an update to help you get the

File compression isn't an overly glamorous topic, but when you stop to think about it, it's a topic well worth discussing.  We don't even think about it these days.  You download a .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, or .7z file and sometimes your OS (MacOS in particular) will decompress the file

Many times I've wished I had better access to a desktop machine when in various odd places... Maybe I had an iPad, or my phone, but really needed a desktop machine in order to do some specific work that is, simply put, just easier with a regular Linux machine. If

This is a nice little application that is very straight-forward to install and get running.  After my previous videos on self hosted / open source speed tests you can run from a Web GUI, many of you asked about an option for getting multiple test results over time in order to

Duplicati is a really amazing backup solution for your local machine.  You can use Duplicati to backup locally, to storage on your own network, or to cloud hosted storage.  The front end runs in a browser window, so it essentially just runs in the background.  You setup your backup, schedule

In the past we've gone over some great tools for checking your internet and network speeds from the command line, but there is really nothing quite like a really nice GUI (Graphical User Interface) for doing something like a speed test. Today, I wantt o introduce you to not one,