I’ll add my voice to the chorus and recommend Proxmox. I’ve never tried xcp-ng; it looks nice and I’m interested, but Proxmox has worked well for me.

Don’t let elitism ruin the adventure for you. Enjoy your success while you take time to learn other crap.

My useless advice: Do it in phases as you learn.

• Start off with Yunohost. It is simple to get started and works pretty well. Try different apps to see what you like and what might be worth using for real. Just make sure that you keep in mind this is more of a “proof of concept” for testing things. Unless you plan to purchase another mini pc later.
• When you feel like you have out grown it and want to start learning more about things, you can move to something like Proxmox. This allows you to create virtual machines and play with containers (docker/lxc). If you plan well, you can back up your Yunohost data and configs to another drive, wipe Yunohost install and replace it with Proxmox. Then install a VM running Yunohost and restore your data and configs you previously backed up.
• Then you can start playing with lxc containers and docker containers.
• If you can get a second machine with multiple drives, install TrueNAS or OMV. Use that to store all of your data on NFS drive that you mount from your Proxmox VMs and containers.

Years ago I used to run a linux server with everything installed under Apache virtual directories and fought the constant upgrade cycle. Life got in the way and I gave up on it until the pandemic slowed life down enough for me to start playing again. So I went the Yunhost route on an old Mac Mini. I now have a 3 node Proxmox cluster with Yunhost in a VM (with a dozen apps running on it) and another 15-20 containers running under either lxc or docker. I eventually purchased a cheap NAS device for data storage so that I could make use of the Proxmox fail over capabilities.

If your mini pc has the capability for two drives, install the OS on one and store data on the other (unless/until you get a second pc/NAS).

LOL

No, just a hobby. Been playing around for about a year. It started small with an old mac mini and Yunohost. Then I decided to play with Proxmox and bought a used m93p. Then I read about Proxmox clusters, so I got another m93p. I was going to use the mac mini in the cluster, but it was getting too slow, so I bought the Brix. Then I decided to migrate the Yunohost setup over to a VM in Proxmox. Then I figured I should learn a bit about docker. And it spiraled.

I spend maybe 10-12 hours a month on installation and configuration. I spend way more time using it. A couple of weeks ago I spent about 15 hours over the weekend importing/uploading my audiobooks into AudioBookShelf. Last year I spent several weekends getting my Calibre library in shape and moving it to the web.

I figure this is a much cheaper and safer hobby than drinking.

• Matrix Synapse
• Paperless-ngx
• MediaTracker
• Lychee
• Immich
• AudioBookShelf
• Baikal
• Monica
• Nextcloud
• Calibre-web
• Piwigo
• Pinry
• Prosody
• Shaarli
• Wallabag
• mygpodder
• Peertube
• Mealie
• Mastodon
• Firefox sync
• Seafile
• Dokuwiki
• The Lounge
• Redmine
• Gitea
• Castopod
• Portainer

This assortment is run under a combination of Proxmox LXC containers, docker containers, and Yunohost. Mostly I use it to play around, but most are heavily used by my wife and I. I’m planning to rebuild everything and making things more “official”. Looking to convert from a “lab” to actually making it “production” with solid failure routes and backups. I am looking to move anything currently under Yunohost to docker/lxc and to start making use of podman. Recently saw CosmOS and think it might be a good alternative to portainer.

Hardware:

• Node 1: Lenovo m93p tiny with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD - Proxmox
• Node 2: Lenovo m93p tiny with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD - Proxmox
• Node 3: Gigabyte Brix with 16GB RAM and 500GB Sata SSD, 128GB m.2 SSD - Proxmox
• Node 4: Trigkey Green G3 with 16GB RAM and 1TB Sata SSD - Proxmox
• TPLink managed switch
• TerraMaster 2-bay NAS with 2x 2TB HD (NFS host for containers)
• Synology ds220j NAS with 2x 8TB HD (backup of home desktops, laptops, cell phones, and lab systems)