I have been wanting to self-host recently I have an old laptop it’s a Toshiba satellite m100-221 sitting around it only has 4gb of ram, but I don’t know what is a good starting point for an OS for my home lab I discovered yunohost but heard mixed opinions about it when searching I would like lemmy’s opinion on a good OS for a beginner wanting to start a home lab I would prefer a simple solution like yunohost but would like it to be configurable it’s fine if it needs a bit of tinkering.

  • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    Easily can have multiple LXCs, and being able to take snapshots for backup is probably a nice thing to have if you’re just learning.

    And if they get more hardware, moving VMs to other clustered proxmox instances is a snap.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      If you just want LXCs, use Docker or Podman on whatever Linux distro you’re familiar with. If you get extra hardware, it’s not hard to have one be the trunk and reverse proxy to the other nodes (it’s like 5 lines of config in Caddy or HAProxy).

      If you end up wanting what Proxmox offers, it’s pretty easy to switch, but I really don’t think most people need it unless they’re going to run server grade hardware (i.e. will run multiple VMs). If you’re just running a few services, it’s overkill.

      • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        13 days ago

        If you’re just running a few services, and will only ever be running a few services, I agree with you.

        The additional burden of starting with proxmox (which is really just debian) is minimal and sets you up for the inevitable deluge of additional services you’ll end up wanting to run in a way that’s extensible and trivially snapshotable.

        I was pretty bullish on “I don’t need a hypervisor” for a long time. I regret not jumping all-in on hypervisors earlier, regardless of the services I plan to run. Is the physical MACHINEs purpose to run services and be headless? Hypervisor. That is my conclusion as for what is the least work overall. I am very lazy.

          • drkt@scribe.disroot.orgEnglish
            0·
            13 days ago

            They use some of the same kernel functions but they are not the same. They are not comparable. LXCs are used to host a whole separate system that shares kernel with its host, docker is used to bundle external requirements and configs for a piece of software for ease of downstream setup. Docker is portable, LXCs much less so.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              0·
              13 days ago

              Sure, Docker is more or less an abstraction layer on top of LXC. It’s the same tech underneath, just a different way of interacting with it.