Blogs on Giacomo Di Clerico

From Gentoo to NixOS — My Desktop Journey

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been distro-hopping with intent for a while now. Not for fun — each switch taught me something fundamentally different about Linux. This is the story of how I went from Arch to Gentoo to NixOS on my main workstation.

Arch — a solid year as my daily driver

I’ve been using Linux for a long time across various distributions, so I was already quite experienced when I moved to Arch Linux. Arch became my main operating system for over a year. Rolling release, minimal base install, and the wiki made it a solid daily driver. It taught me how to construct and maintain a system from the ground up. But after more than a year of running it daily, I wanted even deeper control — not just over what packages were installed, but over how they were compiled and configured.

Server Migration — From bootc to NixOS

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I recently migrated my homelab server from a bootc (bootable container) setup on Fedora to NixOS. The trigger wasn’t philosophical — it was a real breakage caused by the iptables/nft transition and Fedora’s kernel policy.

The bootc setup

bootc is a model where your entire OS is defined as an OCI container image. You write a Containerfile, build the image, push it to a registry, and the server pulls and boots from it. It’s immutable infrastructure taken to its logical extreme — your OS has a CI/CD pipeline.

Git 101 — Public Course with POuL

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In March I held Git 101, an introductory Git course organized with POuL — Politecnico Open unix Lab, the student association at Politecnico di Milano focused on open source culture and Linux.

The course was open to everyone: no prerequisites, just a desire to finally understand what happens when you run git commit. I contributed to the slides, worked on the material on GitLab, and held the session in person — also streamed live on YouTube, where over 300 people tuned in.

Homelab — Stack & Infrastructure

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My homelab started as a small Linux test server and gradually evolved into a full virtualized, self-hosted infrastructure, built for learning, experimentation, and reliability.

Stack

Proxmox VE — virtualization layer (KVM + LXC)
k3s — lightweight Kubernetes cluster
Flux CD — GitOps continuous delivery
SOPS + age — encrypted secrets in git
Tailscale — secure remote access and subnet routing

Services

Immich — photo and video management (backed by CloudNativePG)
Nextcloud — personal cloud, file sync, notes, calendar
Pi-hole — network-wide DNS filtering

Networking

ExternalDNS + Cloudflare for automatic DNS management
cert-manager — DNS-01 wildcard certificates via Let’s Encrypt

Personal Website & Workflow

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My personal website is built using Hugo, the hugo-theme-terminal theme, and an automated deployment workflow designed for speed, simplicity, and long-term maintainability.

I chose an open-source static site generator to keep full control over my content, ensure long-term stability, and avoid dependencies on external platforms or databases.

Tech Stack

Hugo (static site generator)
hugo-theme-terminal theme
Markdown-based content
Multilingual EN/IT setup
GitHub repository for version control
GitHub Pages for automated builds
Cloudflare for CDN, HTTPS, and caching
Custom domain with DNSSEC enabled

Why Hugo

Extremely fast (builds in milliseconds)
Open-source and actively maintained
Secure by design (no server-side code, no database)
Flexible thanks to themes, templates, and shortcodes
Ideal for long-term maintainability

Deployment Workflow

Write content in Markdown
Commit changes to GitHub
GitHub Pages builds the site using Hugo
Cloudflare distributes the static files globally

This gives: automatic builds, atomic deployments, global CDN caching, HTTPS by default, zero downtime.