Published Oct 23, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT

Korbin is a Linux system administrator who spends most of his time in a terminal figuring out how things actually work. Over the last decade he's written hundreds of articles about Linux configuration, troubleshooting weird problems, and using open-source tools in the real world.

He also works a lot with Windows systems and networking, especially in mixed environments where things don't always behave the way the documentation says they should. Writing things down is how he makes sense of it all and hopefully saves someone else a few hours.

When I first got into home storage, I assumed that I would need to pick up a NAS . You know, one of those sleek little towers from a manufacturer like QNAP or Synology. They come with bays where hard drives slide in easily, plus a full-fledged app store tailored to storage devices.

Technically, though, any system can be turned into a NAS . Even one that started out with a totally different purpose.…