from async_amuro@lemmy.zip to homelab@lemmy.ml on 29 Sep 2025 18:55
https://lemmy.zip/post/49871944
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/49871942
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/49871915
Hey everyone!
I’ve been rocking Proxmox for a little over a year on an old Mac Mini with a failing NIC (I probably damaged it when I installed the SSD). So I decided it was time to get some new used cheap hardware and I have just received a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF, going to throw 32GB of RAM, a 1TB M2 NVMe boot drive and a 4TB SATA drive for media in it (this will replace my external 4TB drive).
Right now in Proxmox I’m running a Docker VM with Debian (Transmission-VPN container, ByteStash, FreshRSS, KaraKeep), another Debian VM for Visual Studio Code so I can remote into VS Code on my Mac and iPad and couple of LXC containers (Plex, Open WebUI and Pi Hole).
Honestly Proxmox feels like overkill for what I’m doing, half of what I’m doing is either individual LXC containers or I find myself SSH’ing into the Docker VM. The Proxmox helper scripts are great, but I feel like I’m not learning much and I don’t know how much I can trust random GitHub URLs.
I’d like to start learning and becoming more self-sufficient with Linux. I was pretty excited by the idea of learning NixOS, get comfortable learning the code and then creating distinct configurations for different systems, including my Mac devices with Darwin… then I was reminded of all the recent bullshit happening in the community… I don’t want to get deep into the discussion in this thread, but I don’t really want to use/support a distro that Palmer Luckey and Anduril are trying to influence and control.
So I’m trying to decide if I should stick with Proxmox, try something like Arch or keep an eye on what’s going down with Nix and have a good backup strategy if the situation worsens.
I’d probably switch from Docker to Podman, use Wayland with Niri and learn NeoVIM and use SSH instead of VS Code remote tunnels.
Based on my current setup and my goals, what would you suggest I do?
threaded - newest
It really depends on your end goal I would say.
With a “bare” arch install you will probably learn the most (possibly the hard way). Also, arch being a rolling release, be prepared to update your system a lot, and fix problems as you go. That being said, I’ve been using the same arch install for a few years now and have had to fix stuff only once (Nvidia drivers, the usual culprit). If you want to try bleeding edge stuff, that would probably be the best option.
Nixos : same as you, tried, and left because the community couldn’t settle, and seemed to be fragmenting more and more. Also cool for bleeding edge stuff (thanks to the easy rollback)
You could also go for a debian based distro (debian or Ubuntu). My servers run on this, simply because they tend to require less maintenance.
There are also quite a few “docker-centric” distros, that can also be an option.
Whichever option you choose, if you use a lot of containers, mane sure to use something like docker compose, and keep your compose files safely somewhere (a git repository, a backup’d nas, …). You will keep a lot of nixos’s workflow goodness (everything is a config file), without some of the trouble.
I would start with how important the server working 24/7 is. If it is running mission critical stuff that can’t be down, then go with what you are familiar with; you don’t want to have to learn something completely new when nothing is working and you don’t have the slightest idea why.
If it is mission critical stuff, then go with what you are already familiar with, which sounds like it would be Proxmox. If the server is not as mission critical, then starting with another distro would likely be the way to go. Arch and NixOS could both work fine as a server for someone that is familiar with either of those distros. The real problem is that if you are not necessarily familiar with those distros is that it can be easy to stumble into dragons, which is where familiarity with the distro comes into play. It sounds like you are already using Debian, which works well as a server and can do pretty much anything that Arch can do (including getting more updated repos by just changing to testing or unstable branch). It would also give you the familiarity of already knowing how to use and operate on so there will hopefully be less surprises that arise. The Arch Wiki can also still apply to Debian, but you might have to do a bit of mental translation between things like package names and commands as well as some file location stuff.
An alternative could be Debian+Podman and Ansible. I used it for a while and it was quite good setup.