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 🚀
iximiuz Labs year wrap-up: major milestones, usage and revenue numbers, and plans for 2026 🌟
Hello there! 2025 was a wild year for iximiuz Labs! The platform's growth - signups, usage, revenue, all of it - has exceeded my highest expectations. I'm incredibly proud of the amount, quality, and technical depth of what shipped this year, and grateful for the immense support of the iximiuz Labs community. Below is a recap of the most important developments, some key usage and sales numbers (yay, it's bragging o'clock), and my plans for iximiuz Labs in 2026. Features shipped in 2025...
iximiuz Labs update: dev and ops horror stories and an illustrated guide on how to use playgrounds
Hello 👋 Ivan's here with a mid-month iximiuz Labs update. In this email, you'll find a few debugging horror stories, a couple of brief incident postmortems, and a bunch of illustrated tips and tricks on how and why to use iximiuz Labs playgrounds. The popularity of the latter keeps growing, and so is the number of questions I get, so it's time for me to start documenting the answers 🤓 Debugging horror Traditionally, after a big release (persistent playgrounds this time), a period of...
Ivan on the Server Side
Hello 👋 November is over, so it's time for my monthly roundup of all things Server Side. However, the format of this issue will be somewhat unusual - instead of sharing the labs update and a bunch of good reads, I'll try to cover several important topics that have come up in the past few weeks and then briefly touch on my plans for 2026. And in December, the traditional roundup will return - I've got so many great links in my stash for it 😻 In this issue: How to get started with Linux/DevOps...
New ways to experiment on iximiuz Labs: instant clones and click-ops playground creation
Hello 👋 A week ago, I announced the release of Persistent Playgrounds. The feature was long-awaited and garnered significant initial traction and constructive feedback. In this follow-up email, I want to introduce the very first improvement release and outline a couple of powerful new use cases enabled by Persistent Playgrounds. But before we dive into it, I'm obligated to remind you about the ongoing Black Friday sale, and that it is the last (hence best) chance to opt in for the...
A treasure trove of eBPF learning materials 🐝
Heya 👋 I have been so heads-down with adding the support for Persistent Playgrounds that didn't get a chance to properly announce the release of the second batch of Teodor's eBPF programming series. If you missed my previous email about this work, Teodor J. Podobnik is a renowned eBPF developer and technical writer, who chose iximiuz Labs to publish his hands-on eBPF learning materials. Teodor's writing is crisp and clear, and while the tutorials are highly practical, they also come with the...
Persistent Playgrounds and Black Friday on iximiuz Labs
Good news, everyone! Playground persistence - by far the most frequently requested feature - is finally in production! It is now possible to preserve the state of the playground VMs' filesystem on exit and restore it on the next day, week, or even quarter 🎉 From the UX standpoint, the changes are minimal: The running playground page now includes a new Stop button (in the top right corner), which differs from the historically available Terminate button: stopping shuts down the playground but...
A long-awaited eBPF skill path lands on iximiuz Labs: Write your first eBPF program with eBPFChirp 🐝
Hello 👋 eBPF is one of the topics many of you have asked me to cover on iximiuz Labs - but until now, I've lacked both the time and enough production experience with the technology. That's why I couldn't be happier to announce that Teodor J. Podobnik, a renowned eBPF developer and technical writer, chose iximiuz Labs to host his new eBPF programming series. When I was getting started with eBPF myself (a few years ago), most of the available materials would: Assume deep prior knowledge of...
Ivan on the Server Side
Hello 👋 Ivan's here, with a monthly roundup of all things Server Side for September. The issue is well overdue, but I have a great excuse - I've been heads down finishing the first module of my hands-on Docker Roadmap, and I'm happy to announce it's finally ready! 🎉 What I was working on The primary focus has been on the Docker Roadmap, but this work has also resulted in a nice spin-off tutorial, which ended up being one of the most-read articles I've written 🚀 Plus, I also added some...
Get Better Playgrounds... by Solving Challenges
Hello there 👋 It's a short one, but you'll probably like it. I was checking the stats the other day and was unpleasantly surprised by the percentage of students who have tried solving iximiuz Labs hands-on challenges: Only 10% of all signed-up students have solved one or more challenges. Only half of the above people solved more than two challenges. These numbers are plain disappointing to me. However, what I also discovered is that there is a strong "core" of about 500 students who have...
How Containers Work: Building a Docker-like Container From Scratch
Which Linux namespace is the most important for a container? 🤔 After spending more than a month researching the topic of how containers are created at the lowest level, I came to the conclusion that the mount namespace is the bedrock of container isolation. There is a good reason for it - Linux has long treated the filesystem as the central interface for managing processes, devices, and resources. Once you start assembling a container, it quickly becomes clear that other key namespaces - PID,...
A satellite project of labs.iximiuz.com - an indie learning platform to master Linux, Containers, and Kubernetes the hands-on way 🚀