Desktop

The desktop section covers the computer you personally work from day to day. That might be a tower, a laptop, or something in between. The form factor does not matter much. What matters is the operating system, the configuration, and the habits you build around it.

The source material this series draws on was written with Ubuntu Desktop in mind. This series diverges from that. Everything here is built on Kubuntu, the Ubuntu LTS base with KDE Plasma as the desktop environment. The underlying system is identical: same repositories, same package manager, same terminal, same everything that matters for the technical content in this section. The difference is the desktop layer sitting on top of it.

Why Kubuntu

KDE Plasma is the right choice for this kind of setup for a few reasons worth being upfront about.

It is configurable in ways that GNOME simply is not. If you want your desktop to work a particular way, KDE will let you make it work that way, without extensions, without workarounds, without waiting for the upstream team to decide your preference is worth supporting. That same philosophy, preference for control over simplicity, is exactly why you are reading a guide about self-hosting your own infrastructure rather than just using Google Drive.

The KDE application suite also integrates well with the services built in this series. Kontact handles calendar and contacts in a way that connects cleanly to a self-hosted Nextcloud instance. KMail is a capable mail client. Dolphin is a file manager that does not treat you like you might accidentally delete something important. These are not mandatory choices, but they are coherent ones.

Kubuntu specifically, rather than a vanilla KDE distribution, means you get the stability and support cadence of Ubuntu LTS underneath it. Security updates, long term support, a vast package ecosystem, all the Ubuntu benefits with a desktop environment that stays out of your way.

What this section covers

The desktop section works through the machine from the ground up, starting with secrets management and working outward to the applications and services that connect your desktop to the wider network you are building.

• Passphrases, keys and certificates — Managing the cryptographic material your desktop needs to participate in a secure network
• Network — Connecting to the right VLANs, configuring the VPN client, making sure traffic goes where it should
• System mail — Routing local system notifications somewhere you will actually see them
• Anacron — Scheduled tasks that work on a machine that is not always on
• Backup — Because a desktop without a backup strategy is a question of when, not if
• Web browser — Firefox, configured for privacy and self-hosted services
• Mail client — Thunderbird or KMail, connected to your self-hosted mail server
• Safe system — Tails for when you need a clean, amnesic environment
• Safe storage — LUKS full-disk encryption and encrypted volumes
• XCA — Managing your certificates locally with a GUI that makes the CA workflow bearable
• Instant messaging — Connected to your self-hosted XMPP server
• VPN client — WireGuard, tying your desktop into the wider network regardless of where you are
• Nextcloud sync — Files, calendars, and contacts, synchronised to your own server

A note on version currency

Kubuntu releases follow Ubuntu’s LTS cadence, with a new LTS every two years and point releases in between. The documentation in this series is written against the current LTS at time of writing. Package names, configuration paths, and default behaviours can shift between releases. Where something is version-sensitive it will be flagged. When in doubt, the Kubuntu documentation and the KDE UserBase Wiki are both worth having open in a tab.