A satellite project of labs.iximiuz.com - an indie learning platform to master Linux, Containers, and Kubernetes the hands-on way 🚀
iximiuz Labs 2026 Mid-Year Update: Search, More Content, Community Calls, and What's Next
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Hello, fellow server dweller 👋 Half of 2026 is over, and it’s a good reason to look back at what happened on iximiuz Labs so far this year and reiterate (slightly adjusted) plans for the second half of it. The short version:
Ok, now the longer version. Content is still kingAt the beginning of the year, I promised myself (and all of you) that I wouldn’t get nerd-sniped by yet another “cool platform feature” and would instead spend most of my time preparing learning materials. That resolution came right after a major overhaul of the playground engine, which brought Persistent Playgrounds and a bunch of other powerful “core” capabilities. And while I’m really proud of that work, it also reminded me that iximiuz Labs is only as useful as the learning materials people can practice with. Have I spent as much time on content as I wanted? Not really. “Running” the platform now takes a significant fraction of my day, and there are always bugs, support requests, author questions, server capacity issues, and random operational fires to deal with. But things are definitely moving much faster than last year:
There has been progress on courses, too:
It’s honestly a little mind-blowing, but the content collection has more than doubled this year. The past 6 months brought more learning materials than the previous 3 years combined. Which brings us to today’s announcement. Site-wide search is finally hereWith the number of content units on the site crossing the 400 mark, the absence of a site-wide search became impossible to ignore. So, today, I finally shipped it 🚀 There are actually three related pieces. A consolidated content catalogThe new Catalog lets you search across all learning materials in one place:
You can search the whole library, narrow things down by collection or category, filter by tags, or just browse around until something catches your eye. No more annoying jumping between Quick search with ⌘K / Ctrl+KThe second part is the new quick site-wide search. Press In some ways, this one might actually be even more useful than the catalog. In addition to learning materials and playgrounds, it also searches through documentation and vendor pages. The catalog is still better for intentional content discovery because it has richer filters. But a quick search is perfect when you already have something in mind and just want to jump to it.
Quick navigationThe same quick search box can also be used for navigation. Type
…and it should take you where you want to go.
All of this is powered by a new full-text search service codenamed Sherlock. Enjoy! Other major features shipped this yearSearch is the fresh announcement, but quite a few other things have landed in the past 6 months. The common theme is the same: I’m trying hard to stay away from rebuilding the playground engine again and instead focus on the learning experience, content discoverability, and author-facing features. Here is a quick recap. Better catalogs and content pagesAll catalogs - tutorials, courses, challenges, playgrounds, and the rest - got a new look, better filters, and a smoother UX. Content pages also received a proper layout refresh: better sidebars for course lessons and challenges, full-width views for all content types, and a generally more polished reading and practicing experience. I wrote more about that in a previous issue of this newsletter. Author profilesAuthor profiles are now first-class citizens of the platform, and you can meet all iximiuz Labs authors at https://labs.iximiuz.com/authors. Authors are featured on content cards, in catalogs, and on the content pages themselves. This is a small but important step toward making iximiuz Labs not just “my platform with some guest posts,” but a proper place where independent technical authors can publish serious hands-on learning materials. Vendor pagesAnother new thing: Vendor pages. A few great companies are already featured on iximiuz Labs:
The idea is simple: DevTool and infra companies can show their products through interactive playgrounds instead of yet another static landing page. If you have a company and think your product would benefit from being demoed in realistic, hands-on environments on iximiuz Labs, ping me - we can probably get a vendor page for you, too. A revamped Docker RoadmapThe Docker Roadmap UX has been fully reworked. You can now start the roadmap, receive daily portions of hands-on challenges, and navigate the whole thing much more comfortably. More details here. Daily practiceThe default screen for authenticated users now shows four daily challenges covering the key server-side skills:
This feature was very well received. The number of challenges solved per month has almost doubled since it was introduced, which makes me very happy because hands-on challenges is the key “learning-by-doing” format on iximiuz Labs. DocumentationA proper documentation section was added: https://labs.iximiuz.com/docs It now covers most of the important platform capabilities: playgrounds, persistent runs, custom playgrounds, publishing content, labctl, and more. It’s not 100% complete yet, but it’s very close. Independent authors and content monetizationIndependent authors can now monetize their content on iximiuz Labs. And we already have the first author with two paid content packs - Teodor Podobnik 👏 This is still early, but it’s an important direction. I want iximiuz Labs to become a good home for serious technical authors who want to publish hands-on materials without building their own sandbox infrastructure, payment flows, access control, and student UX from scratch. Nested virtualizationNested virtualization support was added via an alternative Cloud Hypervisor backend. Sandboxing is a hot topic, and many modern sandboxes use microVMs. Since Firecracker and microVM-based isolation are very close to my heart, I really want people to be able to experiment with “nested” microVMs on iximiuz Labs, too. For example, before this change, launching Docker’s Read more here.
Longer playground uptimeOn paid tiers - Premium, Tinkerer, and bundle owners - playground uptime is now configurable and can be extended up to 24 hours, instead of the default 8 hours. A lot of labctl improvementsThe
I use Growth is acceleratingNow, a few numbers. Last year, 21K people signed up for iximiuz Labs. This year, we’re already at 16K signups, so there is a good chance we’ll break last year’s record. Playground usage is growing even faster:
That’s some serious growth. Revenue is growing, too:
Are we sustainable yet?The platform is finally doing fine. Some months were better than others, but all in all, Q1 ended net neutral, which was a huge milestone for me: the first 6 months of relying solely on iximiuz Labs income without losing money. I didn’t really make money either, but not burning the cushion felt good. Especially because there is no cushion anymore 🙈 There is one worrying trend, though: server prices are going through the roof, “thanks” to AI. Even Hetzner has increased prices on some bare-metal servers by 3-4x since the beginning of the year. That said, I remain hopeful. Usage is growing, more people are supporting the platform, and the direction feels right. If you want to support iximiuz Labs and get a pretty nice deal in return, check the pricing page - on popular request, I’m extending the Summer Skill-Up sale for another two weeks: https://labs.iximiuz.com/pricing What’s nextIn my 2026 plans post, I listed the following goals:
Before all that, I also wanted to:
Not too bad for half a year. Here is what I’m hoping to ship in the second half of 2026. Even more learning materialsThere is still a lot on my own content list:
I was originally planning to focus heavily on Kubernetes this year, too. But Márk and other authors have been doing a great job there:
So I’m increasingly tempted to focus my own efforts on agents, sandboxes, and microVMs instead - especially because Firecracker is one of the areas where I can bring a lot of first-hand experience. The first pieces are already there: User-defined learning pathsThis is one of the ideas I’m most excited about. The rough plan is to let you compose your own learning path by picking tutorials, challenges, and other materials from the catalog. But there is also an AI-assisted version of the same idea: you ask for a path to master skill X, and the assistant uses the newly added search capabilities to assemble a sequence of existing iximiuz Labs materials tailored to your request. The important part: the learning materials themselves will not be AI-generated. The assistant may help with selection and ordering, but the path will still consist of human-crafted tutorials, challenges, courses, and skill paths. I think this could become a nice middle ground between fully curated roadmaps and totally free-form browsing. More capable playgroundsThe playground engine has come a long way. It started with a fixed set of single-VM playgrounds. Then came:
Of course, there will be more capabilities and UX improvements in the future. I still want iximiuz Labs playgrounds to feel like the fastest way to get a realistic server-side environment for learning, experimentation, demos, and research. A new America regionAt the moment, iximiuz Labs has Europe and Asia regions. The next region I want to add is America. This should improve latency and general playground experience for folks in North and South America. It will also make capacity planning slightly more flexible, which is increasingly important as the platform keeps growing. We should talkWe also started doing community calls! We’ve already had half a dozen of them, but I haven’t announced the format much outside of Discord because there were a few technical issues to iron out first. Now things have more or less stabilized, so consider this an official-ish invitation. The format is intentionally lightweight - a cozy fireside chat where everyone can show and tell what they’re working on, ask questions, share ideas, or just hang out with other server-side folks. As long as it’s Linux, networking, containers, Kubernetes, infra, DevTools, sandboxes, or something nearby, it’s probably a good fit. Wrapping upThe first half of 2026 has been intense. iximiuz Labs is still very much an indie platform, with all the chaos and constraints that come with it. But the direction feels healthier than ever: more authors, more learning materials, more students, more playground usage, and, finally, a business that is at least close to sustaining itself. There is still a lot to build, and I’m sure I’ll keep underestimating the work as usual. But seeing people solve challenges, publish their own materials, run trainings, create playgrounds, and use the platform for real learning makes the whole thing worth it. As always, thank you for reading, learning, publishing, reporting bugs, supporting the platform, and occasionally reminding me not to disappear into yet another 25,000-line backend rewrite. Happy hacking! Ivan P.S. On popular request, I'm extending the Summer Skill-Up Sale for another two weeks. If you want to be ready for the new hiring season, now is the time to start prepping. September is already too late. |
Ivan on the Server Side
A satellite project of labs.iximiuz.com - an indie learning platform to master Linux, Containers, and Kubernetes the hands-on way 🚀