cross-posted from: https://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?

  • t3chskel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    I’ve been running Arch with Incus on a few hosts and I love it! The initial setup was incredibly easy. I have connected the hosts together to easily move containers/VMs between them if needed. It’s really simplified my setup. Incus does have a web server but I actually don’t use it because the command line tools are very powerful and flexible. Definitely recommend Incus over proxmox.

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    half of what I’m doing is either individual LXC containers or I find myself SSH’ing into the Docker VM.

    I think you might be misunderstanding the purpose of Proxmox. It’s a hypervisor, not a Docker/LXC manager.

    Think of a hypervisor as a digital version of a server rack - a server rack that can be managed from the confort of your couch.

    For what it’s worth - I SSH into my Docker VMs all the time. I also run LXCs. And VMs for other purposes (beammp, Minecraft, etc). Proxmox isn’t meant to manage Docker itself.

  • Overspark@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    +1 for Podman. I switched from docker last year and I’m really happy I did. It’s not all sunshine and roses (can’t copy paste so much from the internet being the main issue, nobody gives examples for it), but the product itself is much better.

  • SpikesOtherDog@ani.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    The two reasons to run proxmox here are one, to create external snapshots and two, to allow multiple operating systems to share your workstation. I keep a virtual Windows install for random windows os stuff on the same server.

    If you are not getting the benefits of virtualization, then it makes sense to run bare metal.