Self-Hosted Main

Denian stable, openSUSE Leap

If you want a beautiful front end for docker containers

CasaOS/ZimaOS Cosmos-server Unbrel

Otherwise

• proxmox
• truenas
• unraid

TrueNAS scale. Why: my main concern is backup and data protection, and TrueNAS offers just that. On top of that it's flexible enough to build a media suite on top of it, and it's easy to manage. I could have also gone unRAID, but since trueNAS is free and offer a bit better protection imo (at the cost of flexibility), I picked that

I think it really depends on what you intend to do with it... Many answers here will mention what they use but not why.

In my case I want to have various services installed in docker containers, and I have the skills to manage Linux in console. A very simple solution for me was to use a rock-solid, established Linux distro on the host (Debian stable) with Docker sourced from its official apt repo. It's clean, it's simple, it's reliable, it's easy to reinstall if it explodes.

Why containers (as opposed to directly on the host)? I've done both over several years and I've come to consider the container approach cleaner. (I mention this because I've seen people wondering why even bother with containers.) It's a nice sweet spot in-between dumping everything on the host and a fully reproducible environment like nixOS or Ansible. I get the ability to reproduce a service perfectly thanks to docker compose; I get to separate persistent data very cleanly thanks to container:host mapping of dirs and files; I get to do flexible networking solutions because containers can be seen as individual "machines" and I can juggle their interfaces and ports around freely; I get some extra security from the container isolation; it's less complicated than using VMs etc.

Arch, because I've always had a better experience with it than Ubuntu, be it server or desktop. I also daily drive it on my desktops.

It's so much easier to setup. Only with Docker and MergerFS it's a command and easily updatable, instead of the PPA setups or bash installs you have to do on Ubuntu. The wiki is still the best.

And it's way easier to maintain when there's less stuff.

I used unraid last year, excellent experience learning how to use docker + vm in a user-friendly interface.
Now I use debian (installed via debootstrap) headless (docker only).

I went from freenas to unraid and couldn't be happier.

Unraid has a ton of really amazing features, it's super easy to use, the docker support is great (freenas didn't have docker support when I left), the parity drives are magic, and just being able to slap random disks of any size in your NAS is great.

I've had a few issues with freenas, but I've never had a single issue with unraid. That shit just works.

Edit:

I have a live stream porn downloader, that'll watch when people come online and start capturing the stream. I don't want this to be part of my system and putting strain on it, so with unraid I'm able to put disks in my system and use a plugin called unassigned devices, which allows me to add them to the system, but have them be separate from my main array.

That's why I just love unraid. The flexibility is great.

Alma, Talos, OpenBSD

Proxmox, TrueNAS, Ubuntu server.

vSphere 8

Almalinux period. Use smb for fileshares, rsync for backups and docker for everything else.

Ubuntu server, everything on it runs with docker, nothing beside docker is installed, because of this i use rolling release instead of LTS

Homeserver? Surely you mean home serverS.

Proxmox, unraid. Ubuntu server vms

Proxmox on bare metal. Then a TrueNas VM for storage. And a Ubuntu VM for containers.

Fedora Kinoite + podman

I use Debian stable just because I'm so familiar with Linux

I use a mix of truenas, debian, and proxmox

I tried Unraid - left due to annoyance of losing server function when I had to take drive arrays down and only scrubbing on demand

Went to True Nas scale for the promise of ZFS and liked it, but had issues with the interface and getting GPU passthrough to containers was impossible.

Ended up ditching my large server case (still have it - anyone need a large 12 drive 3U case with a big threadripper and bunch of ram - hit me up) and switched to a NUC running ubuntu with portainer managing my dockers on it and all my data stored on a Synology NAS.

Arch Linux for my primary server. Raspbian for my SBCs.

Used Unraid for many years and moved to TrueNAS Scale, mainly due to lack of raid performance and bitrot.

Really happy with TrueNAS Scale and specially K8s.

I use Fedora.
Why not Promox or unraid or any of those? Because I didn't see a personal benefit to it over Linux+libvirt+qemu (I'm sure there is a benefit, I just don't care enough to find out) Why not Arch/Debian/Ubuntu/etc? Because I partially use it as a way to learn or practice things from work and I want to stick as close to RHEL as possible.

FreeBSD with its jails

Anything that can run docker works for me.

Currently running 1 server. Ubuntu, with docker because I'm not doing a ton, but I don't want to have to take down my pi-hole if I need to reboot jellyfin. etc.

RHEL 9 for all my servers home and abroad. I have a few vms that run with kvm and I use docker for everything else that I can

Harvester HCI

Clean Debian + Docker w/ portainer, without installing anything extra on it. SOLID.

• Device support is great for older enterprise stuff

• Stable as it goes.

• Easy to find solution for problems you may come across due high userbase.

Truenas for the nas, proxmox for everything else

I was an ESXi fan for over a decade until I found proxmox.

Now I use a combination of VMs and Linux containers.

I use containers for:

Pihole, Ubiquity WiFi Controller, Plex, Audio Bookshelf, imfluxdb, etc. And VMs for Home Assistant and Untangled.

https://ramblingnonsense.substack.com/p/a-journey-from-esxi-to-proxmox-in

Proxmox 👍👍👍

windows server, I don't like raid software

VMware on one, runs Ubuntu (and then docker) and various appliances. Xpenology on the other. Xpenology also runs Docker for more OOTB containerized apps.