Tyler Langlois
blog.tjll.net · Personal blog · on HN since 2014
Tyler Langlois writes about Linux systems and infrastructure: systemd, Nix, SSH, routers, and benchmarks like Caddy versus nginx.
What HN saysHN commenters cite his Caddy vs. nginx benchmark, his systemd timers post, and his guide to building a router on an Espressobin.
46HN people shared it
14linked it in comments
37stories submitted
1.5Kstory points
4 months agolast shared
2014people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 135M Hot Dogs: Benchmarking Caddy vs. Nginx11 people · 427 points · first shared 2022 · 143 comments on HN
- 2Building My Perfect Router8 people · 40 points · first shared 2018 · 4 comments on HN
- 3You Don't Love Systemd Timers Enough5 people · 7 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 4SSH Kung Fu3 people · 488 points · first shared 2014 · 130 comments on HN
- 5Systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success3 people · 120 points · first shared 2025 · 113 comments on HN
- 6Please stop hashing passwords3 people · 68 points · first shared 2014 · 95 comments on HN
- 7A beginner's guide to extending Emacs2 people · 155 points · first shared 2025 · 17 comments on HN
- 8One Year with the Framework Laptop and NixOS2 people · 94 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 9Practical linux pipelining2 people · 6 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 10Systemd for (Impatient) Sysadmins2 people · 5 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11Kippo Honeypot Video Gallery1 people · 58 points · first shared 2014 · 17 comments on HN
- 12Industrial Strength Arch Linux1 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 13Kippo Honeypot Video Gallery: Screencaps of Intruders at the Terminal1 people · 3 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 14Have You Considered Load-Bearing Shell History? (2022)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 15The Human Resources Alignment Problem1 people · 2 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
LargoLasskhyfv · 2026-06-30
https://kainctl.github.io/isd/ in the context of https://blog.tjll.net/you-dont-love-systemd-timers-enough/ or similar.
frankjr · 2024-02-27
Caddy is great and to my surprise it's actually very competitive with nginx in terms of performance, sometimes even faster.
https://blog.tjll.net/reverse-proxy-hot-dog-eating-contest-caddy-vs-ng…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32865497
tylerjl · 2023-07-05
https://blog.tjll.net/
The posts that made it to the top of HN (that I can recall at this moment)
35 Million Hot Dogs: Benchmarking Caddy vs. Nginx (https://blog.tjll.net/reverse-proxy-hot-dog-eating-contest-caddy-vs-ng…
SSH Kung Fu (https://blog.tjll.net/ssh-kung-fu/)
Building My Ideal Router for $50 (https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/)
I've been using nix/nixos a lot lately and will probably end up publishing more in that general area of interest. That and my excessively-overengineered homelab.
Naac · 2020-10-18
I personally use shorewall on an Espressobin ( though any multi-port computer works ). The guide I followed is here:
https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/
( BTW, I would not recommend the espressobin if you want gigabit speeds )
I can't find the one I got originally, but any wifi AP works, like amzn.com/B010S6SG3S
Just get one for the approximate bandwidth you want to support.
Grimm665 · 2020-01-15
Do you know if Debian/Armbian is working on Espressobin? Last time I played with one, I couldn't get Armbian loading and went with Arch instead, following this tutorial:
https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/#part-two-software
foota · 2017-06-16
This is a really great discussion of the difference between hashing and secure password storage, would highly suggest reading: https://blog.tjll.net/please-stop-hashing-passwords/
commandersaki · 2025-08-23
I understand the optimisation, I'm just saying I'm sceptical the optimisation is even that useful, like it seems it'd only kick in with pathological cases where kernel round trip time is really dominating; my gut reckons most applications just don't benefit. Caddy in the last few years got sendfile support and with it on and off and it usually you wouldn't see a discernible difference [1].
Which makes me sceptical for the argument for kTLS which is stated in the article; what benefit does offloading your crypto to the kernel provider (possibly making it more brittle). I've seen the author of haproxy say that performance he's seen has been only marginal, but did point out it was useful in that you can strace your process and see plaintext instead of ciphertext which is nice.
[1]: https://blog.tjll.net/reverse-proxy-hot-dog-eating-contest-caddy-vs-ng…
sertsa · 2025-07-10
Maybe this was the better link: https://blog.tjll.net/the-systemd-revolution-has-been-a-success/
Aurornis · 2025-02-27
I really like Caddy, but these nginx performance comparisons are never really supported in benchmarks.
There have been numerous attempts to benchmark both (One example: https://blog.tjll.net/reverse-proxy-hot-dog-eating-contest-caddy-vs-ng… ) but the conclusion is almost always that they're fairly similar.
The big difference for simple applications is that Caddy is easier to set up, and nginx has a smaller memory footprint. Performance is similar between the two.
hparadiz · 2024-05-30
Caddy uses more RAM and has no inherent benefit when running a project in production professionally. Caddy is easier for self hosted cause it automatically handles HTTPS where Nginx does not.
Related reading:
https://blog.tjll.net/reverse-proxy-hot-dog-eating-contest-caddy-vs-ng…
mkmk3 · 2022-10-13
All I have to refer to is NixOS, no fedora (not op). Seems pretty good though.
https://blog.tjll.net/one-year-with-nixos-on-framework/
ews · 2021-05-20
Old but relevant, I have used an espressobin as a router for years and the performance I am getting is similar to much more expensive semi-professional routers. https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/
visualphoenix · 2020-06-08
Looks like the new odroid c4 (raspberry pi competitor) has this g31 chip. [0,1]
Might be interesting to try building a cluster with these. [2]
I wonder how much remaining work there is for full upstream support on these AmLogic chips? The problem with arm chips has always been limited upstream distro support.
The Linux-Sunxi folks have been working for years to get the Allwinner stack up to snuff... it’s taken a long time.[3]
Is there any community around the AmLogic and Rockchip stuff as solid and coordinated as the Allwinner folks?
[0] https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-c4/
[1] https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/04/23/50-odroid-c4-raspberry-pi-4-co…
[2] https://blog.tjll.net/distributed-homelab-cluster/#network-consensus-a…
[3] https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
comex · 2017-06-16
Here’s a good blog post explaining it:
https://blog.tjll.net/please-stop-hashing-passwords/